Re: subjunctive mood and Microsoft

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Mike Lyle (mike_lyle_uk_at_REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk)
Date: 10/10/04 

Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 19:49:56 +0100

Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
> I don't see how changing the order of the posting would make any
> difference when context is snipped.

Because readers in a particular group may expect to see a logical
flow; and downwards is the conventional direction of flow in reading
material. Imagine a book laid out on top-posting principles. Then if
you can, when you've got used to that, imagine a book laid out on a
random mixture of top-posting and bottom-posting principles. In the
more sophisticated groups, such as AUE, where complexity of argument
is taken for granted, posters take a bit of trouble to snip with
discretion -- I for one don't always get it right, but it usually
works out on the night. It goes to blazes if somebody snips the lot;
and it gets tedious if they don't snip at all.

(I don't here refer to the dimmer newsgroups, which seem to survive
mainly because their posters only want to see their name in lights,
and don't care too much what other people have to say anyhow.)

A group devoted to quick technical question-and-answer, where the
subject line quite often says most of what has to be said about the
topic and one to three answers are enough, may well find that
top-posting works best. I do that with email. But email isn't a
complex discussion lasting several days or weeks among fifty people.

> I have my newsreader set to Hide
> Read Messages, so when a message does not contain the entire
thread,
> it is (usually) more trouble than it is worth to mark the current
> message as unread, display all messages, find the unread one, and
> then backtrack up the thread.
[...]
Which is why some of us don't do it. It's impossible to carry on a
proper discussion if the previous messages are hidden. "More trouble
than it's worth" means you aren't serious about what other people
have said on the subject. Nothing wrong with that; but it isn't adult
discussion.

Mike.

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