10 What should I do when replying to an earlier article? For example, should I "top post" or "bottom post"? (Tolkien Newsgroups)
Description
This article is from the Tolkien Newsgroups FAQ, by Steuard Jensen sbjensen@midway.uchicago.edu with numerous contributions by others.
10 What should I do when replying to an earlier article? For example, should I "top post" or "bottom post"? (Tolkien Newsgroups)
First and foremost, make sure to retain the attribution of any
quoted text, so others know who said the things you are replying to.
Almost equally important, make sure that you trim the previous post as
much as possible:
* If you are replying to one specific comment in the previous
article, delete all of the previous text except that comment. If
the comment is at all long, try to trim it down to its essence.
Type your reply directly beneath the quoted comment.
* If you are replying to several distinct points individually, quote
each one as above and type your reply immediately below it (and
above the next point).
* If you are replying to a long section that cannot be easily
trimmed down (for example, an original poem or story), quote only
its first and last lines (and perhaps put "[snip]" or "..." on a
line in between the two). If there are particular pieces that
you want to respond to individually, do so as described above.
There are two general rules of thumb to follow in connection with
the above guidelines:
* Any article you post should have more lines of new text than lines
of quoted text. It is generally acceptable to ignore this rule
if the entire post (including basic headers and any signature) is
short enough to fit on a single 24 line screen.
* Any comments specifically replying to the previous article should
come _below_ the relevant part of the previous article. This
makes reading the article more like reading a conversation, and
therefore much easier to follow.
This obviously means that "top posting" is strongly discouraged: it
forces readers to scroll up and down between the new and old material,
and it usually involves quoting the entire previous post(s) untrimmed..
Whether you call our practice "bottom posting", "middle posting", or
"standard netiquette" is up to you.
An example of a post that follows these guidelines can be found on
the web at
http://tolkien.slimy.com/newsgroups/EssayDiscuss.txt
This long message (from a discussion of my essay on Tom Bombadil) would
be all but impossible to follow if the point by point replies were not
organized as described above.
Finally, make sure to keep the subject line up to date, as discussed
in question II.B.1.
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