... why top-posting should be avoided... (was Re: Broken mail readers (was Re: Properly wiping a hard drive ?))

Sam Sharpe lists.redhat at samsharpe.net
Sun Oct 10 22:19:25 UTC 2010


On 10 October 2010 23:14, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-10-10 at 15:40 -0600, Petrus de Calguarium wrote:
>> Has anyone ever noticed that gmail (and likely a lot of other online
>> email services and desktop software) opens a gap at the top for typing
>> the response?
>
> That doesn't mean you have to type there, it just means start working on
> the message from there.  Whether that be typing some pre-amble, starting
> to delete quotes, or whatever...
>
> If it dumped the cursor at the bottom, that'd encourage people, even
> more, to not bother to delete extraneous quoted crap from their message.

I agree. I use GMail and it is my habit on this list to first delete
the blank lines at the beginning that Gmail adds, then scan through
the message trimming as necessary, finally adding my thoughts at the
bottom, right above where Gmail has helpfully inserted my signature.
It's not hard, but it's something you have to learn and force yourself
to do.

--
Sam


More information about the users mailing list