[SC-Help] Re: No source IP address found, cannot proceed.

[Mike Easter]

Anon_ wrote:

> OK you are correct, I (mis)thought that this top post was permissible
> in this particular case - but, yes, top posting disconnects from the
> thing posted about.

Exactly.  The greatest vulnerabilities in newsgroup communications are
the various forms of misunderstanding.  I misunderstand something you
say or how you mean it.  You misunderstand or 'miss' something I say
because I didn't say it clearly enough because I was thinking about what
I was thinking about, but you or someone else were thinking about
something else while you were reading what I was saying.

To say nothing of the missing subtleties of body language or gestures or
facial expressions or voice inflections which we are accustomed to in
other media of communication.

So, as a result, the 'tiny' difference of approximating or juxtaposing
the context of a reply directly beneath what it is addressing is of
/enormous/ importance.  That single 'little' difference makes
quantitative leaps of an order of magnitude in the quality of the
communication of the conversation.

It 'forces' a poster to be 'staring at' the precise and exact words
which were used before -- 'forcing' the poster's brain and words to be
even more responsive to the very words than that respondent would have
been by 'simply' posting a reply to hir recollection of what s/he is
replying to.  And posting that reply 'up in the sky', isolated,
disconnected, in a vacuum impairing its association and enhancing or
aggravating any existent confusion.  The enhanced precision and accuracy
of a 'conversation' of trimmed contextualizers is beyond comparison with
top posters.  Any top post derogates or deteriorates the 'quality' or
accuracy or understanding of an existing conversation.

The people who think that top posting is simply an option contrasted
with 'bottom posting' - like black shoes vs brown shoes - simply don't
'get it'.  Top posting is associated with both impaired understandings
as well as inaccurate communications of the important elements of a
dialog.  And further, that results in a necessity for all involved to
get the dialog *organized* which is impossible because of the disruptive
effects of the top post's destruction of the order of the conversation.

It is almost never appropriate to top post.  Sometimes it would be
better to summarize what has been said before without 'quoting' anything
underneath -- but in no case is there some kind of 'advantage' or
desirability to put a post or remark on 'top of' a bunch of accumulated
junk - cite marks, sigs, attributions and various other content amassed
from before.

-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin