Re: [Pan-users] Reading an HTML posting when using 'old' Pan

[Steven D'Aprano]

Joe Zeff wrote:
> On 03/22/2012 08:06 PM, thufir wrote:
> >   I'm sure it was just someone in a hurry, but it sure*seems*
> > like a deliberate choice to re-define a standard.
>
> Actually, it's quite reasonable from the proper POV.  In business, 
> everything is filed in reverse chronological order 

Speak for yourself. My business doesn't file in reverse chronological order, 
nor have any of the companies I have worked for.

But even if they do, what does *filing* have to do with *writing 
correspondence*?

I have written to companies many times, and not once have they photocopied my 
letter and stapled it to the back of their answer (the equivalent of 
top-posting). And I would certainly never expect to receive a copy of the 
*entire* file attached to the back of their answer as a matter of course.

The fact is that most of the time people don't even notice that, after the 
first paragraph or so of fresh text, is an ever-growing five or ten or twenty 
pages of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of every damn email in 
the conversation. They don't notice because they don't look.


> and people become 
> accustomed to seeing things that way.  Very large numbers of people use 
> Outlook every day for business correspondence, and for them, top posting 
> is natural and intuitive.

Except that, as I already mentioned, they are the same people who seem to be 
incapable of answering more than one question per email. These two facts are 
related: they don't notice the copies of copies of copies for the same reason 
they don't notice the questions they should be answering. And on the rare 
occasion they do notice, they can't be bothered doing anything about it.

Grrr arrghhh. Puny humans. Hulk smash!


--
Steven