5 ms·

I've never really understood why so many geeks/nerds/techies complain about top posting. It's simply a stack instead of a FIFO.

dijit 7y ago
Because you read top to bottom. It is non-orthogonal to stop then scan up to the beginning of the reply and then read to the bottom again.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Top posting makes more sense if the frequency of messages is slow enough that people will have already read the previous messages, because you don't have to scroll past all the content you've seen. Where it fails is in a set of messages where you haven't seen everything else already. Really, mail and messaging clients should have a way to track each message separately, and just give the user a choice about how they're displayed.
  - mshook 7y ago
    It's threading and the info is there: that's what Message-ID, References, In-Reply-To are for... But not only top posting won but software made it worse by not displaying threading properly (I'm looking at you corporate outlook, that said gmail and others are the same).
  - dijit 7y ago
    Most email clients (well, thunderbird/outlook at least) will collapse lines prepended with >
- bachmeier 7y ago
  So...you reread every reply in every email?
  - mrmanner 7y ago
    No, but I don’t remember the relevant context in that thread that got its last reply a week ago so I’ll have to refer back to at least some of what’s being replied to if it’s not made abundantly clear :)
  - scbrg 7y ago
    You know, before top posting was a thing, you actually edited the parts you were replying to so that only the bits you addressed remained in your mail. And if you addressed several parts, you separated them, so that it was clear which part of your mail addressed which part of your correspondent's. No re-reading of every reply was necessary, of course. If you hadn't read it before, you could read the quoted parts in full, otherwise it took a mere glance to remind you of exactly what was being replied to. This made reading emails fast, since you could easily be reminded of the context within a few hundred milliseconds, but also had details immediately available in case you had forgotten. These days, that's impossible, of course. You get a reply, and have to dig back in memory for what's being replied to, because of course the 1200 pixel signature and legalese in the footer will have pushed the replied to part off the screen. And when, after some scrolling and clicking, you find the original message, it's of course impossible to know exactly which part of the original mail is being addressed in the reply, since with top posting, there's no way of connecting your reply to the specific part you're replying to.
ColinWright 7y ago
Because often an email has more than one point to which you need to reply, and neither top-posting nor bottom-posting lets you reply to all of them with their context. That's probably a contributing factor to why people only ever answer one question you ask in an email, and rarely reply to all the points raised. In-line replies would go some way to fixing that.
- vidanay 7y ago
  The incomplete answers is outside this context (as you say.) The only way I have found that even comes close to solving this is to include a bold summary at the end of my emails (yes, I use corporate HTML email): To summarize my points above, please answer the following questions for me: 1. When can we...? 2. Who is going to...? 3. What is...?
  - mprovost 7y ago
    It's more effective to ask the (final) question in the first sentence. And if you want a clear answer, don't ask more than one question per email. People always read the first sentence but may not scan all the way down. After some practice you'll naturally start to write emails starting with the question but until then just write it normally, come to the summary at the end, and then cut and paste it to the start.
    - sys_64738 7y ago
      This is like a mini-abstract. Human nature is that you only scan the first few lines and if it's too long (and you're not my boss) then it'll get tossed aside. People who want long emails are in the wrong business today.
      - threatofrain 7y ago
        People who like short emails have synchronization problems that can be resolved in a short breath. Otherwise if you have three questions, you’re talking about three back and forth replies. That synchronization sounds wasteful.
wwweston 7y ago
For the same reason that you wouldn't pick a stack for a situation in which you likely want seekable FIFO or stream -- you have to unwind the stack and reassemble the order to get context and sync with the flow of information.
- jcelerier 7y ago
  I don't understand, the flow of information is the email just above in your mail client ? why are replies containing the parent mail text even needed ? for me they're just a nuisance and duplicate information taking up useful screen estate - I'm grateful for all mail clients which hide it by default.
  - reubenmorais 7y ago
    > the flow of information is the email just above It sometimes isn't. If you have long discussion threads with >10 people it's more akin to a graph than a linked list. If all your emails only have (last received message in thread) as context, then you could probably even get away with a chat system instead of email threads. I guess that's why Slack became so popular, it's the common case.
magicalhippo 7y ago
Top posting is a pain in the butt if you're using mailing lists or newsgroups where you have a large number of mails/posts to follow up, and where the replies are typically arguments that tackle the parent section by section.
zabil 7y ago
Comments over here are easier to read because there's no top posting by design.
- u801e 7y ago
  But they require far more scrolling to go through, as opposed to having a overview pane of the thread structure where you could easily find a relevant comment.
mrmanner 7y ago
One benefit is that a well crafted inline reply can be shared out of context with a new recipient and they have a chance to understand the important points without wading through an entire garbled thread with lost formatting and a billion HTML signatures :)

dijit 7y ago

Because you read top to bottom. It is non-orthogonal to stop then scan up to the beginning of the reply and then read to the bottom again.

onion2k 7y ago
Top posting makes more sense if the frequency of messages is slow enough that people will have already read the previous messages, because you don't have to scroll past all the content you've seen. Where it fails is in a set of messages where you haven't seen everything else already. Really, mail and messaging clients should have a way to track each message separately, and just give the user a choice about how they're displayed.
- mshook 7y ago
  It's threading and the info is there: that's what Message-ID, References, In-Reply-To are for... But not only top posting won but software made it worse by not displaying threading properly (I'm looking at you corporate outlook, that said gmail and others are the same).
- dijit 7y ago
  Most email clients (well, thunderbird/outlook at least) will collapse lines prepended with >
bachmeier 7y ago
So...you reread every reply in every email?
- mrmanner 7y ago
  No, but I don’t remember the relevant context in that thread that got its last reply a week ago so I’ll have to refer back to at least some of what’s being replied to if it’s not made abundantly clear :)
- scbrg 7y ago
  You know, before top posting was a thing, you actually edited the parts you were replying to so that only the bits you addressed remained in your mail. And if you addressed several parts, you separated them, so that it was clear which part of your mail addressed which part of your correspondent's. No re-reading of every reply was necessary, of course. If you hadn't read it before, you could read the quoted parts in full, otherwise it took a mere glance to remind you of exactly what was being replied to. This made reading emails fast, since you could easily be reminded of the context within a few hundred milliseconds, but also had details immediately available in case you had forgotten. These days, that's impossible, of course. You get a reply, and have to dig back in memory for what's being replied to, because of course the 1200 pixel signature and legalese in the footer will have pushed the replied to part off the screen. And when, after some scrolling and clicking, you find the original message, it's of course impossible to know exactly which part of the original mail is being addressed in the reply, since with top posting, there's no way of connecting your reply to the specific part you're replying to.

ColinWright 7y ago

Because often an email has more than one point to which you need to reply, and neither top-posting nor bottom-posting lets you reply to all of them with their context. That's probably a contributing factor to why people only ever answer one question you ask in an email, and rarely reply to all the points raised. In-line replies would go some way to fixing that.

vidanay 7y ago
The incomplete answers is outside this context (as you say.) The only way I have found that even comes close to solving this is to include a bold summary at the end of my emails (yes, I use corporate HTML email): To summarize my points above, please answer the following questions for me: 1. When can we...? 2. Who is going to...? 3. What is...?
- mprovost 7y ago
  It's more effective to ask the (final) question in the first sentence. And if you want a clear answer, don't ask more than one question per email. People always read the first sentence but may not scan all the way down. After some practice you'll naturally start to write emails starting with the question but until then just write it normally, come to the summary at the end, and then cut and paste it to the start.
  - sys_64738 7y ago
    This is like a mini-abstract. Human nature is that you only scan the first few lines and if it's too long (and you're not my boss) then it'll get tossed aside. People who want long emails are in the wrong business today.
    - threatofrain 7y ago
      People who like short emails have synchronization problems that can be resolved in a short breath. Otherwise if you have three questions, you’re talking about three back and forth replies. That synchronization sounds wasteful.

wwweston 7y ago

For the same reason that you wouldn't pick a stack for a situation in which you likely want seekable FIFO or stream -- you have to unwind the stack and reassemble the order to get context and sync with the flow of information.

jcelerier 7y ago
I don't understand, the flow of information is the email just above in your mail client ? why are replies containing the parent mail text even needed ? for me they're just a nuisance and duplicate information taking up useful screen estate - I'm grateful for all mail clients which hide it by default.
- reubenmorais 7y ago
  > the flow of information is the email just above It sometimes isn't. If you have long discussion threads with >10 people it's more akin to a graph than a linked list. If all your emails only have (last received message in thread) as context, then you could probably even get away with a chat system instead of email threads. I guess that's why Slack became so popular, it's the common case.

magicalhippo 7y ago

Top posting is a pain in the butt if you're using mailing lists or newsgroups where you have a large number of mails/posts to follow up, and where the replies are typically arguments that tackle the parent section by section.

zabil 7y ago

Comments over here are easier to read because there's no top posting by design.

u801e 7y ago
But they require far more scrolling to go through, as opposed to having a overview pane of the thread structure where you could easily find a relevant comment.

mrmanner 7y ago

One benefit is that a well crafted inline reply can be shared out of context with a new recipient and they have a chance to understand the important points without wading through an entire garbled thread with lost formatting and a billion HTML signatures :)