RE: Maybe it's time for a FAQ? (was Re: [PLUG] I don't get it. What's the big deal with putting the response on top?)

["Paul L. Snyder" <plsnyder@drexel.edu>]

Quoting Ed Martin <mr.martin@comcast.net>:

> I mean no disrespect at al to any of you by the way I respond. I follow the
> emails that take place from the inception. I don't have time during work to
> scroll down each one for my answer.
> I think like I said before a blog is a blog and this is not one. I want the
> latest answers to this email when I see a reply I do not want to read the
> whole thing.

One final point that I don't think has been made this time around is the
effect of top-posting on list digests.  The PLUG discussion list currently
has 451 non-digested and 104 digested members.  Thus, around 20% of the
subscribed addresses receive list email as batches, where a single
message contains many concatenated messages.  Think about how difficult
it might be to sort out new text from an ever-growing swarm of untrimmed,
unquoted messages, larded with multiple signatures.  Think about just
how many times digest readers have to skim by the same messages, trying to
figure out where the next real response starts.

Imagine that you are blind, and are trying to deal with this using screen-
reader software.

Now, imagine that you're not blind, and you are having the screen-reader
software read your email to you as you drive home.

Context is harder to achieve when a thread may contain multiple discussions
with the same subject, and you can't peek ahead to the quote and jump back
using the vertical scroll bar.  (Remember that if messages are properly
quoted with layers of '>', it is straightforward to implement a "jump to
unquoted text" function.)

Sorry.  I should be putting this in the FAQ entry.

pls
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