Why Bottom Posting Sucks
Throughout the years, posting styles in email lists and in forums have been a point of contention. Essentially, there are three types of posting styles.
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- Inline posting. In this style, the responder answers queries or provides insight throughout the document.
- Top posting. The responder writes his thoughts at the top of the previous discussion. This particular method has long been frowned upon because the dialog is out of order.
- Bottom posting. The responder writes at the very bottom of the discussion, leaving the previous dialog intact and creates a sequential order for the discussion.
The final reason that bottom-posting sucks is that long emails that require a user to scroll through what is sometimes pages and pages of information is physically damaging and actually very difficult to do for those of us whose wrists and fingers tire easily. If someone with mobility impairments has to scroll through so much data just to get to “yup, I’m on the task” it just becomes an insult to that user, who suffers through the inconvenience to get to the message.
Two words: Not Accessible.
I came across an article about the age old "Bottom Posting" vs "Top Posting" with email replies that sums up today's nature of communications online. Post your replies on the top of the message. Though obviously the content is now in "reverse order" when you look at it, did you really need to review the previous messages again? Odds are you have that previous message in your inbox already.
Furthermore, if you were a new recipient of the message mid conversation, or if you just plain forgot the original message, it should be fairly natural to scroll down and figure out the message history in a reverse order as it is. Sometimes information in the first message of a conversation isn't even relevant to you or anyone else.
