Top Posting

The arguments against email top posting have never swayed me.

 Wikipedia tells me top posting on newsgroups is bad and I believe them. I don't use newsgroups so I don't know about that posting style. I can see the point since both news readers and web interfaces (Google Groups) group the threads together by default. I assume the feature works pretty good in those cases.

There is an RFC saying "When replying to a message, include enough original material to be understood but no more. It is extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including all the previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material." Seems the problem top posting is trying to solve is "that top-posters often word their replies on the assumption that you just read the previous message, even though their perversity has put it further down the page than you have yet read". For email this seems like a valid assumption to make. And, like Raymond Chen points out if you add people to a thread you had better tell them why and what you want them to do. Corollary, "don't forget to ask your question." So really people need to learn to communicate better?

Email clients top post by default. Inboxes are sorted in chronological order. GMail is awesome and groups conversations and hides the redundant parts. Grouping seems to work as long as the subject and/or some magical included ID doesn't get removed. But we all know cases that client grouping fails. Worse yet, someone(we know who you are) wants to email you so they reply to any old email lying around with your name on it.

Every professional I have ever seen top posts. They seem to like having the entire email should I want to see it or forward the entire thread to some one. And don't get me wrong, quoting relevant portions in a top post, or inline responses are still good practices. This person, although not a fan, points out the benefits of Top Posting in a business setting. (See When Does Top Posting Make Sense?)

Since I spend most of my time in a business setting where top posting helps so I will keep going. We stopped being worried about the number of bits being transmitted and stored 10 years ago. Top posting can't be that confusing and at least in business the benefits outweigh the negligible costs.
7/10/08 Edit
EmailReplies.com agrees with me too.

Over Constrained

My last post I mentioned I need a wiki.  I used WikiMatrix to evaluate a few solutions and none of them jumped out at me.  I realized my best bet is probably just to signup for a hosting service.  Jaimi likes BlueHost and they have Tikiwiki and Wordpress.  I could have everything in one place.

Then I over constrained the problem.  If I am going to get a hosting service I need a domain.  What should the domain be?  I have no idea, I have been toying with that idea for two years and I can't converge.  I tried NameBoy to get suggestions, and read the BLADAM post saying I should use a made up word that isn't too long, easy to spell, and doesn't sound like other words.  That just over constrained my over constrained problem.

I am not going to settle for scottherriman.com (17 characters) because unless you are an artist, using your full name is lame (sorry if yours is).  Herriman.com is taken.  I think I want the domain to be professional software related.  I am open to suggestions, you have any?

Wait, I need a Wiki

I decided that I would start writing a blog for two reasons. As an outlet for the thoughts on the project that I am working on and to capture details relating to problems that I come across or solve.

After leaving CallWave in September one of the many things that I miss is discussing software with people.  My team listened to me pontificate on software design, implementation and the engineering process.  That may not have been too much fun for them, but it was a good outlet for me.  Otherwise we went out to lunch and batted around the same topics asking questions and sharing.

Most people at CallWave, myself included, use(d) email to store all sorts of information not documented anywhere else.  After a few years it was obvious to me that this was a bad idea.  Email is tough to search, gets lots, "the guy" that always forwarded "those details" might leave the company.  I found that it was much better to dump those emails into a web page.  CallWave had MS Sharepoint for this purpose.  Not a lot of bells and whistles, but it did the job.  Things could be arranged hierarchically, edited, hyperlinks inserted etc.

For the Client team usage, we might just copy and paste an email into a page with no reformatting, just to capture the information.  I had a page for new team members.  Each time I sent the link to some one new I reviewed the page and added/edited a few details.  After a time I had a rather robust "new users guide".  That was the pain free way to have a living document.

I realized the stuff that I am likely to blog about, "hey look at me I figured something out", is the least likely to be read.  Just recently I wrote an entry about a problem I solved.  The information is useful, I am likely going to want to refer to it later, but the article sucks.  Not because the information is bad, just nobody is going to (or should) care.  Besides, blogs are good for capturing current ideas in chronological order.  They aren't meant to be a repository for information.  Searching them is a pain, sure there are tags and Google Site Search.  Still, if you can't recall exactly what you are looking for it stinks.

So, in the end it turns out I need a blog and a wiki.  The wiki should house those technical details that I want to find later.  The wiki is just for me, but none of the information is secret.  I may as well stick it out there.  If other people do find the knowledge useful they will appreciate that it is not buried in a blog.

Now I am in the process of selecting a hosted Wiki solution.  I asked a few friends and they mostly suggested Wiki software.  I need a service since I don't have any desire to be administrating servers.  Any suggestions?