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On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 12:38:17PM -0400, John Manko wrote: |
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> What's the big deal? Is top posting bad posting practice? |
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> |
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Now, I speak from folklore, as I am too young to personally experience |
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the phenomenon, but the story goes like this: |
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In the ancient times, all was good. Men were men, women were women, |
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small furry creatures from alpha centauri were small furry creatures |
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from alpha centauri. |
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|
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There was, then, usenet. |
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|
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Men were good on usenet back then. (there weren't women). People |
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posted cordially, but flamed when necessary. And most important of |
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all, because usenet is like multiplayer email, to keep everything in |
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perspective, people posted while quoting the posts they reply to. |
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And specific questions were answered by specific answers set in a |
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style similar to what we see on FAQs. |
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|
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And then AOL happened. |
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|
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The default client in AOL quotes the entire parent BUT leaves a |
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dashed line above it and two blank lines above that, with the |
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blinking cursors sitting at the very top. The washed masses ignored |
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the etiquette of the unwashed elite and started Top-posting. This |
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soon leads to posting without even quoting, because people think: |
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"why waste the bandwidth on all these unnecessary text below here". |
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|
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Sooner or later, usenet became a wasteland because people cannot |
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communicate with each other because words were no longer put in |
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perspective. And flames abound, trolls came out of hiding, people |
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started calling each others nazis.... |
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|
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Now you get the picture. |
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|
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But with that said, in personal communications, I often still |
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top-reply, because: 1) people are starting to use Gmail 2) I think I |
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can rely on the two people I actually talk to privately to remember |
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what he/she just said twenty minutes ago 3) Scrolling through personal |
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emails like that is a bitch. |
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|
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Best, |
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|
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W |
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-- |
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McDonald's Corollary to Murphy's Law: |
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In any given set of circumstances, the proper |
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course of action is determined by subsequent events. |
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Sortir en Pantoufles: up 7 days, 19:52 |
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-- |
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