Roberts wrote:
Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?
[elsewhere "what is snipping"]

The idea is that it can make a post self-contained: you read the bit
of a post which someone is replying to, and then their comment.

For example, almost all of the stuff in your post was irrelevant to
this post, so I snipped it, apart from the thing I was replying to.
Someone can come across this post and make sense of it (hopefully).

Imagine how difficult it would be for someone reading this post on its
own to understand if I'd top posted. The first thing they'd read would
be "The idea is that it can make a post self-contained". What idea?
Then they'd have to wade through some argument about snipping, and
then reach a bizarre self-referential paragraph, this one, which may
mean that this post is in response to something about top-posting, or
this may just be a parenthetical observation followed by a long series
of questions indicating some kind of doubt about authorial intent.
Without the context, how are they to know? Once that it's been
resolved by the sheer size and complexity of this paragraph that it's
probably not paranthetical, it still remains to be determined "Why am
I writing about top-posting"? Is it just something I do from time to
time? Or am I responding to some point someone raised about it? Or
perhaps it's some kind of lame "post-modern" gag? Perhaps I'm just
insane?

Why aren't they reading the thread in order? Well, threads are
non-linear so you always have to retreat some distance up your stack,
and sometimes you have to do things which aren't reading posts.

Only when they reached the end would they realise the context, by
which time they'd realise that they didn't care. But it's too late by
then, they'd have waded throught all this rubbish when they finally saw:

Dan.

Roberts wrote:
Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?
[elsewhere "what is snipping"]