[Bell Historians] Re: Netiquette

[Mike]

--- In bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com, "Peter Trent" <peter.trent at ...> wrote:
>
> Perhaps there are others like me , (yes even in this day and age) who are not sufficiently netliterate to understand the meaning of the term "top posting" but unlike me are afraid to ask for an explanation...  please!

"Top posting" is the writing your own reply to a message above that text which is being quoted. (Usually via simply "replying" to a message your have received). "Bottom posting" is the writing of your message beneath that part which you are quoting.

Top posting is not a great problem if there is only one reply to one short email.  It gets very messy if there are several replies to one message and/or that message is a long one. 

It gets bleedin' annoying if someone adds a one line reply to a long message in a light vein and that gets replied to by someone else in a similar style, adding one line to the top of that!  ;-)

It is easier to read, particularly for digest subscribers*, if you bottom post and also crop the message that you are replying to so that only the pertinent points are shown on your own message.

The basic idea about "netiquette" is just to please have a look at what is in the message box before hitting "Send" and spend a couple of seconds checking that it is not a bit too wordy!

Mike  

* Please, let's not have the annual "Why not simply have individual emails redirected to a folder in your inbox" discussion.  I mainly read my messages during the day via webmail and this is not an option.