Re: [tlug] An old topic

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:

 > On 2008-02-12 13:07 +0900 (Tue), Charles Muller wrote:
 > 
 > > Because it was "referenced material" (included from an external
 > > source) and not part of a previous discussion on this list.
 > 
 > So why is it that if we've seen the material before, we want to see it
 > again before we see comments on it, but if we haven't seen the material
 > before, we want to see the comments first, without their context, and
 > then see the original material? That seems exactly backwards to me.

In this particular case, there are comments, and meta-comments.
Charles's preface (borrowing David I's excellent word) was not a
comment on or a reply to the content of the quoted text.  It was a
meta-comment, explaining why and how this material appeared.  That one
belongs at the top on theoretical grounds.

In general, your description doesn't take account of the fallibility
of human memory or of the selection value of authorship.  If it was a
long contribution, and the comment pertains to something in the
middle, a top-post is hard to provide context for.  For an extreme
example of author selection, when I killfile somebody, they may still
end up on my radar because somebody else responds to them.  In that
case I prefer inline comments since I haven't see the OP's post.

 > By the way, note that I'm not hardcore one way or another about
 > top-posting; I think it depends on the situation.

I find that top-posting is (a) a good criterion for which posters can
be ignored, other things being equal (a top-post invariably indicates
that the top-poster thinks his own man-hour is worth a large multiple
in man-hours of others), and (b) a good source of useful material if
you wish to block a decision when the boss top-posts his inclination
followed by all the reasons he's wrong.

Top-posting can also be useful when all the comments have the nature
of votes or other global decisions or comment (you only read the
quoted material if you are inclined to question the outcome), and it's
not too bad when everybody is following the whole conversation closely
(but then you might as well nuke the quote).

It's a miserable way to communicate about complex proposals which are
being discussed analytically, piece by piece.

 > But there are a lot of messages I see on mailing lists where I do
 > wish the poster had top-posted in order to save me the hassle of
 > wading through a large mound of material I was already familiar
 > with.

You should be more selective about which posters' posts you read. :-)
It's also not hard for MUAs to hide quoted material.  If you start
with a whole screen of quote or with two lines of comment and the rest
is all quote, you hit "hide quotes" and you get the rest of the
contribution (usually zero ;-).