I’m a member of more-than-a-few mailing lists with rather high daily message counts and about once a month or so, some list novice will step in and commit the cardinal sin of all Usenet/mailing list sins: top-posting. Top-posting is, as defined in the linked Jargon File entry:
To put the newly-added portion of an email or Usenet response before the quoted part, as opposed to the more logical sequence of quoted portion first with original following. […]
This term is generally used pejoratively with the implication that the offending person is a newbie, a Microsoft addict (Microsoft mail tools produce a similar format by default), or simply a common-and-garden-variety idiot.
This usually stirs the list veterans into a flurry of activity and replies to the newbie as to why top-posting is inherently rude, tasteless and an all-around Bad Thing. Feelings get hurt, tempers flare and usually a few people end up resigning from the list in the wake of such an occurrence.
If you’re not a regular mailing list/Usenet reader, you may be asking yourself “What’s the big deal?”. The following email floated across the RedHat Enterprise list this past week and perfectly encapsulates the problem:
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
>> You *shouldn’t* back up /sys (it’s pseudo filesystem, like /proc in 2.4
>> kernels)
hi,
your post came out all wrong on the mailing list; it didn’t get threaded
properly somehow, and you put the answer above the question… Is there
some way you can configure your client to let it properly follow
threads ?
Heh. Death to Jeopardy Posts! Remember to be kind, please bottom-post.
