Re: [VM] Email dangers portrayed in media

[Uday S Reddy]

Tim Cross writes:

> I find it best to decide either top post or bottom post, depending ont
> he context. I'm not convinced there is a one fit for all occasions.
> For a lot of my work email, top posting seems more suitable. For
> longer dicscussion threads involving multiple recipients, bottom
> posting is often more suitable.

Hi Tim, the opposite of "top posting" is not "bottom posting".  Rather, it
is what Wikipedia calls "interleaved posting"

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_posting

Those of us that grew up on the traditional Internet culture tend to assume
that our mail recipients will use a reasonably sophisticated mail client
which can show threaded message summaries and allow the users to find the
full parent message if he/she wants to.  The point of citing part of the
original message is to serve as a quick reminder.

In email debates, it is also necessary to cite particular points and respond
to them.  So, there, full "interleaved posting" comes into play.

In contrast, Outlook users have started a culture where they don't have to
look up the parent messages separately, or probably don't know how to, or
never learnt how to find parent messages because they naver had to.  Whether
Microsoft was at fault for this or whether Microsoft was just responding to
market demands, I can't say.  I also suspect that the early versions of
Outlook probably didn't implement message threads and people got used to
citing original messages in replies.  

There are also new forces that are forcing people in the direction of citing
more and more messages.  The so-called "Inbox zero" paradigm
(http://inboxzero.com/) recommends that people should aim to have zero
messages in their inbox.  So, don't expect people to find the parent
messages, because they will be gone by the time you reply!

Cheers,
Uday