[I've removed all recipients except the list. I don't wish to start
a side-fire over that but assume that everyone who cares is following
this on the list and does't need a personal copy.]

On Thu, 30 Jun 2011, John H. Outlan CPA wrote:
> I didn't want to respond to this because excepting this list I gave up mail
> lists in the 90s for this sort of thing. I try to bottom post for threading
> purposes, but my preference is top posting in the age of smartphones where
> information is more easily accessible.

> So I defer to this mailing list authority on this issue. Btw, top posting is
> much more expedient on a smart phone.

Ah. Thanks for the heads-up about smart phones.

Over the years I've found that my opinions of what makes for
"good" and "bad" netiquette are heavily influenced by features
of my message (mail or news) reader.

SL5 doesn't add many packages to those supplied by TUV, but one
of them is pine/alpine.

pine is not good at threading, which means that pine users don't really
understand when some people complain when people take an unrelated
message, reply to it and change the subject.

On the other hand, on thread-supporting mail clients
the thead means that the human reader already has a context
when they start reading a new message.
They can go straight into the top-post knowing where they are.
pine users see a top-posted message and have to go grovelling in
the full quote of the previous message to see what this one is about,
and then go back to the top to see what is new.

-- 
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison		Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
[log in to unmask]	http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna