RE: [gentoo-user] why gentoo doesn't have long description?

["Dave Nebinger" <dnebinger@joat.com>]

> As a matter of curiosity, why is top posting considered bad form.  I'm
> using Thunderbird and when it views the mail, by default it is at the
> top.  With bottom posting, I have to scroll down to view the post.

Because we don't read from bottom up, we read from top down.  For example,
this comment by itself makes no sense (are we talking about how we read,
etc.).  The context of the previous post is needed to understand the context
of the reply.

Top posting means that you, as a reader, will need to scroll back and forth
in order to understand what the context of the original post and the reply
are.

And things get even worse if you top post a reply that deals with part (but
not all) of the original post; contextually it is sometimes difficult to
determine which part of the original post the reply is intended for.  This
is why many of us will embed replies within the originally quoted text to
ensure that the context of both the original post and the response are
clear.



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