The Fervor Over Top Posting
I like John Gruber. In my mind he captured the spirit of the generation that grew up with Evel Knievel - my generation - by giving his blog what might be the greatest name ever coined: Daring Fireball. I have a t-shirt. He also uses the term colophon on his site to link to a page which includes this quote:
"If Daring Fireball looks like shit in your browser, you’re using a
shitty browser that doesn’t support web standards. Netscape 4 and
Internet Explorer 5, I’m looking in your direction. If you complain
about this, I will laugh at you, because I do not care."
That makes me laugh every time I read it.
The other day, John took a break from his recent iPhone immersion to offer a minor rant about top posting. Then I read Matthew Schinckel mention it and it got me all fired up so I have to say...who freaking cares?! <yawn>
I mean, I don't get it. I really don't get it. Look, like Matthew I was raised bottom- and, more accurately, mid-posting when the Internet was dominated by text. I like that format just fine and it's terrific for many things. But I don't break out in hives when I receive a reply that's top posted, either. It's just not that big a deal to me. Sometimes - you might want to be seated for this - it's even convenient (to read and to write).
I just find it amazing how bent and defensive people can get about it sometimes. I've participated in many a mailing list where other participants would respond aggressively, angrily and nastily to a top posted reply. Seriously, who cares?
Maybe I'm missing something, but this just doesn't seem like that big of a deal. We should really have bigger things to worry about. If we don't, then I guess we're doing all right for ourselves.
Back to my nap.
This one of those sentiments I've had for a long time and get reminded of periodically so I just decided to write it down this time. :-)
And, by the way, great blog. I found it while trying to figure out what I needed to put together an Adium script. It seems your post is on the subject...pretty much the only documentation of that effort.
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