Topband: Bottom versus top posting

[Tree]

I have had a number of inquiries about top / bottom posting and what my
guidelines are.  

I am probably not as hung up over whether your top or bottom post as I am
the following concepts (when replying to someone elses post):

1. If the information you are sharing is really only useful to the person
making the initial post - I will be less likely to forward it to the list.

2. If your posting has more lines of quoted text than added text, it is 
less likely to get posted. 

In general - I like the idea of quoting one or two lines from a message
you are responding to - so that someone who is seeing your message first
will have some idea of the context.

For example, there are some messages I approved this morning that were
"on the edge" of not making it.  I'll pick on these to demonstrate my
thinking:

(I apologize to those of you that I am going to pick on, but hope you
will understand I am not picking on you - just trying to demonstrate 
a point):

The ZL3IX reponse to PY1NB did offer some new information and might be
useful to other people.  However, it probably copied much more of the 
original message than necessary in order to set the context.  It's not
necessary for someone to read the whole PY1NB message to understand
Greg's response.  It would be nice to have a one or two line limit "at
the top" before adding some value.  

The WX7G response to K6XK starts off without really setting the context.  
I have to go read the bottom of the message to understand what is being 
talked about.  This is sort of the opposite problem of the ZL3IX response.  
If this were me, I probably would have copied one or two lines from the 
original message to set up the response.  Looking at it now - this 
probably was just a specific response to K6XK that should not have been 
posted to the whole list, bit I decided to post it as an example.

The G3NRW message isn't a response - but if someone does respond to
it, maybe they can use some of the examples above to help make their
posting more efficient.

The NZ4O "response" was sort of a post of it's own merit - that
related to the previous thread.  It stands on its own without really
relying on any information from the previous thread.  It's just a 
different way to add to the conversation.  Since it doesn't rely on
any facts from the thread to understand - this is fine with me.  The
risk you run is that someone might not make the connection to the 
previous topic (keep in mind that we often have multiple threads going
and not everyone is going to be on the same wavelength as you are).

I hope this helps.  Ask questions if you are not sure.

73 Tree N6TR