Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:114354
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 22:51:49 +0100
Message-ID: <CAGBsUrePAey_fdAq0S_XtcnPhcXsB=tgnff0TUNfPo-AtTEheQ@mail.gmail.com>
To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0000000000007e2e6905c200c984"
Subject: Could we drop the bottom-posting rule?
From: tekiela246@gmail.com (Kamil Tekiela)

--0000000000007e2e6905c200c984
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Hi Internals,

Could we drop the bottom-posting rule?

Almost all new contributors fall into this trap and reply to a thread by
top-posting, only to get chastised by someone else on the list. It's really
difficult to remember to delete the default reply. Mail clients don't make
it easy for us; it's hidden by default. Bottom-posting makes reading the
thread much more difficult too. The actual reply gets lost in between the
quoted content. I often get confused about what is new and what was
quoted. Many modern clients are designed to handle top-posting and don't
handle bottom-posting well. People are usually used to it and they read
from top to bottom. I don't know if in the past some mail clients defaulted
to bottom-posting but right now it just seems like an unnecessary
annoyance.

If you want to quote someone then it makes sense to copy a part of the
message and then add a reply below, but forcing people to remove the
default reply from the mail client and then add the whole previous message
on top of your own reply isn't very productive. It wastes time and screen
space.

Could we please change this rule or at least stop enforcing it?
Do people actually have mail clients that don't automatically hide the
previous conversation? If not, then I think we can let people top-post.

Regards,
Kamil

--0000000000007e2e6905c200c984--