Top Post vs Bottom Post (was: Fedora-18 -- how to install?)

[Bob Jonkman]

Lennart Sorensen asked:
>What the heck is a screen reader?

"Screen reader" refers to an assistive device that turns text normally displayed on a screen into speech, or a single (or double) line of braille, or a single line or a single word of magnified text.  These are serial outputs, ill-suited to bottom-posted messages.

--Bob.

"A screen is an assistive device for the visually dependent"
--Geoff Eden, Accessibility Planner for the City of Toronto
 

On 13-03-05 03:12 PM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 05, 2013 at 12:34:28PM -0500, Bob Jonkman wrote:
>> I read every message in the TLUG list.  As I read and delete each
>> message, it is far better to have the new content at the top, where it
>> is immediately visible.  I've already read the quoted reply text
>> contained in the current message (because I just finished reading the
>> previous message), so there's no need to repeat it to provide context. 
>> But keeping that quoted reply text is still important in case I want to
>> save that message independently of the message thread, so don't just
>> reply with an otherwise blank message, but keep the previous
>> conversation below your reply.
> So a week later I read this, and I then wonder "what the hell is this
> about?".  Now I have to scroll down, guess what you are refering to,
> and then find out where I got to up here.
>
>> Bottom posting is especially obnoxious for people who use screen
>> readers.  They can't just visually skip over the previous reply text,
>> they have to sit through an entire recitation, even when they've just
>> heard it in the previous message. Yes, there's "skip to end", but that's
>> prone to missing interspersed replies.
> What the heck is a screen reader?
>
>> Interspersing your replies with the previous message is useful if you're
>> replying to only a small portion of the previous message. In that case,
>> copy the portion of the message you're replying to at the top of your
>> message, write your reply below it, and then keep the entire original
>> message below that,
>> possibly with duplicated portions.
> Actually is is always useful, so that you can tell what the reply
> is about.
>
>> In today's world the argument of wasting bandwidth by including the
>> orginal message is no longer valid.  Have a look at the raw, unformatted
>> message -- I'll bet the message headers (with list headers, anti-spam
>> headers, DKIM headers, and the chain of received headers) is often
>> larger than the content of the message.  And anyone who's ever listened
>> to a podcast or watched a YouTube video has plenty of bandwidth, and no
>> cause to complain about using few extra KB to include the full reply text.
> The argument has at no point been about wasted bandwidth.  It has been
> about having things in a logical order and context for the reply.
>
>> And finally, I just want to voice the observation that all the
>> complaints I ever see about top posting vs. bottom posting are
>> invariably started by bottom-posters complaining about top posting. 
>> People who top-post never complain about the bottom-posters or
>> interspersers.  Why is that?
> Because most top-posters often know they are wrong and are just too
> lazy to deal with their broken client.  Perhaps most don't care and are
> just busy forwarding the latest joke email to all the people they know.
> I have no idea.  None of them have ever had a valid argument presented
> for top posting being a good idea other than in business situations
> where you might want to be able to forward an entire conversation to a
> new person without having to dig up all the other messages.  For mailing
> lists that isn't an issue, and generally there is an archive you can
> point a person at instead which will me much easier to follow and read
> than the horrible top posted conversation.
>


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