In article , Pam Moore
writes

Kay. are you saying that your newsreader just puts one post after
another irrespective of subject, so they are all jumbled together?

Kay writes
No - I'm saying that hitting the space bar (or hitting the 'next unread'
button) takes me through the first new post from top to bottom, then
from the first new post to the next new post, which it does in an
organised fashion down one branch, then down the next branch and so on
till all branches are exhausted, then on to the first new post in the
next thread and so on.

But since I read urg a couple of times a day, each branch of each thread
may have only one new post. So if there is no quoting, I have to break
the flow and hit 'previous' to go back to the previous post, and read
what it is that the poster is responding to.

Since I expire posts after 3 days, I may need to re-request a post, if
the non-quoting poster is replying to something several days old.

And more recently we are getting posters who not only fail to quote,
they start a new thread for each of their replies! And I defy any
newsreading software to sort that one out.

I have e-mailed the webmaster of gardenbanter and asked them to look at
the way their users posts are appearing here, as in my Turnpike I see
several multiple posts with the same thread topic, and all of the
duplicates are gardenbanter. The reply was helpful and they are looking
into it.

Agent, which I use, is very well organised.

So is Turnpike, which is what I use.

The posts are
automatically grouped under the subject line.

Turnpike does this, in a tree structure which shows clearly which post
is in response to which - which may not be so important in urg with its
tiny threads, but in another newsgroup which I read, where threads have
in the past run to over 1000 posts, the tree structure comes into its
own.

But even though it is clear which post is responding to which (except
when people start new threads for their every post), if people don't
quote, you still have to go back and open the old post and read it.

Except I don't bother any more. If I don't understand what the post is
referring to, I just ignore it.

I've suffered from RSI in the past, so being able to just hit the space
bar, rather than doing lots of mouse work opening previous posts, is
important to me.

I've never used another
newsreader so don't know how the rest work. I find no trouble and have
said before that it is a pain to scroll through long posts which build
up with each subsequent post, and then I find at the bottom "I agree
with you" or other one line additions. It's better when people snip as
much as possible.

I couldn't agree more!

This is where top posting makes life easier.

Ah - but then hitting space bar in Turnpike scrolls down the post before
it moves to the next one, and top posters rarely snip, so you read a
one-liner at the top, ad then hit space 20 times as you scroll down all
the old posts still dangling from the bottom!

Besides, it would have been a nightmare having to respond to all your
points in a single paragraph at the top ;-)

But I
know I'm in a minority here and don't top post any more!

:-)

IME top posting is the convention for business where time and getting
the reply is most important and you are most likely to be familiar both
with the subject and the poster. Bottom posting for ngs where you really
need to know the context (out of many many possible threads and ngs) in
order to understand the reply
--
David