On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 05:56:51 GMT, Rich Grise
wrote:

>Top-posting is better, because unless you're coming into the middle of
>a thread, you've already read the rest of what's gone before.

Until I'd read the entire post, I had no idea why you were posting
this. Top posting removes all context from the reply, making the
entire post less readable for most people. Just because you like
top-posting, doesn't make it better, and most people don't like it.
BTW, you should also trim the reply, taking out redundant lines. HTH,
HAND.

--
Joe Zeff
The Guy With the Sideburns
So many twits - so little time...
http://www.lasfs.org http://home.earthlink.net/~sidebrnz

On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 05:56:51 +0000, Rich Grise wrote:

> Top-posting is better, because unless you're coming into the middle of
> a thread, you've already read the rest of what's gone before. People who
> bottom-post will get skipped over because people get tired of scrolling
> down through page after page of old crap, just to see what the bottom-
> feeder^H^H^H^H^H^Hposter has to say.

Top-posting is better than bottom-posting, but it's not actually
*good*. Trimmed quotes with interleaved replies is best. (This
message is itself an example.)

> Cross-posting is better than multiple posting, because it only puts
> one copy of the body of the post on the USENET, with references,
> thereby using its bandwidth only once. Plus, it lets more readers
> see the question and thread and so on. Ergo, you're more likely to
> get an answer. :-)

True, as far as it goes. Don't cross-post more than you really
need to. (Some groups - I think comp.os.linux.help may be one of
them - were supposed to be removed years ago. Many news servers
missed the removal, so they still get a fair number of users, but
in theory they are less widely propagated than other comparable
groups - e.g. comp.os.linux.misc - that are formally supposed to
remain in existence.)

Ed Murphy wrote:
>
> On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 05:56:51 +0000, Rich Grise wrote:
>
> > Top-posting is better, because unless you're coming into the middle of
> > a thread, you've already read the rest of what's gone before. People who
> > bottom-post will get skipped over because people get tired of scrolling
> > down through page after page of old crap, just to see what the bottom-
> > feeder^H^H^H^H^H^Hposter has to say.
>
> Top-posting is better than bottom-posting, but it's not actually
> *good*. Trimmed quotes with interleaved replies is best. (This
> message is itself an example.)

Which is precisely what is recommended in the "Netiquette Guidelines" in
RFC 1855 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt?number=1855).

> > Cross-posting is better than multiple posting, because it only puts
> > one copy of the body of the post on the USENET, with references,
> > thereby using its bandwidth only once. Plus, it lets more readers
> > see the question and thread and so on. Ergo, you're more likely to
> > get an answer. :-)
>
> True, as far as it goes. Don't cross-post more than you really
> need to.

Also, when cross-posting it is customary to set follow-ups to one
group. Again, see RFC 1855 from the Internet Engineering Task Force.
(You'll note that I haven't set follow-ups despite this being
cross-posted. That's something the OP should have done at the start of
the thread...I really wouldn't know where to direct follow-ups now.)