On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:46:19 -0700,
(paghat) wrote:

In article , "Vox Humana"
wrote:

"S. M. Henning" wrote in message
news
wrote:

trimming is not a universal practice, ...

But is should be. I have seen email messages with a half-dozen others
included.

what is most time consuming is rolling all the way down ...

What is slick is a mouse with a thumbwheel on it. Then you can scroll
up and down in a fraction of a second. No time is consumed.


You can also page-down by hitting the space bar.

People who top-post, I tend to stop reading their posts after a while,
because I don't want to have to scroll down then back up again, just to
find out what the hell they think they're responding to. Their method
doubles the amount of time it takes to read the post in context, while
failing to double the value of the time spent reading.

Top-posting is outdone by people who leave nothing at all of the previous
post but respond to it anyway. No context at all!

As for people who never trim the previous posts so that each addition
makes consecutive posts longer & longer & longer, I rarely bother to
scroll to the bottom for the newest addition, because I've learned over
time if they're too dumb to know how to trim a post, they're too dumb to
say anything interesting. In some newsgroups, however, this is called
"cascading," & people make terse comments one after another until the
posts are exceedingly long. This is a tradition especially in flame
newsgroups, which pretty much reflects the value of never trimming.

I also tend to stop reading posters who don't have enough sense to turn
off MIME or html features. Again, if they're too dumb to post properly,
they're not apt to be bright enough to say anything of interest, so I'm
not likely to miss anything useful or entertaining by skipping to the
next.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com


OK, this is bottom posted, but I've thought long and hard about this
issue and realised that my view depends upon circumstances. If I am
coming to the thread where only one or two new messages have been
added since I last logged on and where I have seen and remembered
earlier messages within the last day or so when they are still
reasonably fresh in my mind, I can pick up the story quite adequately
with some reminder of old context posted above (with suitable
snipping) and new context bottom posted. In contrast, if I am playing
catch up with several week's worth of messages and multiple threads
(as I am with other threads at the moment), I have a lengthy session
where I know the content of the preceding message in the thread
because I have read it from the beginning of the thread 30 secs
earlier and it is tedious to scroll down to find the added new
comments. I have come to the conclusion that I will accept any method
of reading posts in this newsgroup in order to make sure that I don't
miss out on the intrigue, the scandal, the conflict going on, as well
as updated news about old friends, and of course ... occasionally new
tips about gardening!

(;-)
Geoff

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