[SpamCop-List] Trimming & getting along

[Mike Easter]

Some of this is to help 'us' understand where the topposter may be
'coming from'.  tinu    Some for other purposes.

Top posting environments:
 - some corporate emails where topposting and maintenance of everything
which came before 'intact' and undisturbed is required
 - a very few newsgroups where it is accepted or preferred by most
 - emailers who 'grew up' topposting

In topposting newsgroups, typically the inline contextualized poster
will just have to make do somehow, generally trimming and sometimes
'rearranging', which makes for a 'mixed' ng.  And s/he might as well
'shut up' and not try to change a newsgroup or start arguments about it,
ie proselytize contextualizing.

The topposting environment isn't 'hurt' by a /well trimmed/ inline
contextualizer.  The topposting ng is going to be *very* [extremely]
intolerant of untrimmed bottom posting, and such 'irresponsible' bottom
posters should toppost instead.   Contextualizers who are poor trimmers
are going to have trouble/static in topposting ng/s.  My only advice to
them is to learn how to trim, and trim well and trim often in that
environment.

Trimmed inline contextualized environments
 - most newsgroups, almost all

In inline contextualized ng/s, the topposter /must/ conform to the
standard because it doesn't work otherwise.  /Everyone/ including the
individual who prefers topposting in hir own mail and topposting ng/s
has the responsibility to keep extraneous material cleaned and ordered
for subsequent inline contextualized posters, and it isn't possible to
predict which posts will be replied to how.

This creates a problem for the topposter, whose thinking and editing
processes work differently from the contextualizer.  Commonly the
topposter has hir automatic sig set at the 'top' which is where s/he
starts 'pushing down' everything below hir by editing above the sig.

More importantly the thinking and responding is different.  The
topposters work on feelings and recall generated from their
/impressions/ while they were reading the post and they are not
/exactly/ responding to /it/ where 'it' is the /precise/ words of the
preceding, in isolation.

Instead they are responding to 'something else' - a more vague
recollection which caused a set of thoughts which result in what they
are now saying.  What they are saying doesn't actually perfectly match
with what they read;  which is all the more reason that they are
'uncomfortable' even considering putting their words in juxtaposition to
the preceding.  So, they are responding more 'vaguely' and they consider
it more 'globally'.

What they 'must' do in the communal contextual environment, is stop
'hitting they keyboard' right after they hit reply, in spite of the fact
that they are ready to 'speak' now, because of their style.  They /must/
accept the responsibility of all of that editing/trimming of the
previous post before they start writing ;  which they consider very
troublesome, time-consuming, boring, unnecessary, and disruptive to the
thoughts they formulated while reading and which are 'ready' to be put
down.

My feeling is that if they aren't going to or don't want to reply to
some specific words, then the 'quickest' thing they could do would be to
'wipe out' the previous post in one fell swoop and then briefly
paraphrase it with something like "Re hot air balloons".

It would be much better of course, if they would modify their style and
contextualize, because the exact words are more critical to the dialogue
than the topposter realizes.  I think the topposter should get hir own
reply in hir head as usual, then trim/isolate the words they are going
to respond to, then 'reorder' what they were getting ready to say on the
basis of the exact words before their eyes.  That 'words right in front
of the eyes' style represents a significant difference in topposters and
contextualizers.

This trimming business also brings up the problem of the contextualizer
who is a poor trimmer in the inline environment.  Contextualized poor
trimming is easier to forgive and to remedy than topposting, because at
least everything is in the right order for the next trimmer to come
along and straighten out.  But, very very poor trimming and no
contextualizing results in bottom posting, which is almost as bad as
topposting in some ways and worse in others;  certainly worse in the
eyes of the topposter.

-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin