Re: Posting Style

On Mon, 7 Nov 2022 17:06:19 -0500
grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:

> No, that's complete utter nonsense because now poor Fiona
> is also forced by others into wasting her brain cycles trying to
> read reverse hodgepodge from bottom to top, gearshifting reading
> direction with every included snippet (which are in top-down form),

	There are no included snippets only complete messages, and Fiona
has to do this *once* to catch up with the thread after that she just reads
the top like everyone else.

	The only alternative that gives Fiona full context is to put the new
material at the bottom with *no* trimming at all which is fine the first
time you see the thread but a real PITA afterwards and especially when the
conversation runs for a while without adding new people (as real ones tend
to unlike my example) because *everyone* has to scroll to the bottom and
then work up to the start of the reply for *every* message.

	The full context *has* to be in every message because it has
nowhere else to be and putting the new material at the top minimises the
total effort. When the context is visible to all interleaved posting and
maximal trimming is the best approach otherwise top posting and full quoting
is generally used because it works best.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org>