Enhanced message formatting BETA phase 2

[sherwoodpete]

I consider confuses your readers the most significant issue.

Following a common convention aids readability for everyone. When most users are posting in a particular style, to choose a different approach seems somewhere in the range of unintentionally confusing to deliberately obtuse.

When posts grow to great length, as frequently happens, to scroll to the end to find the reply, only to find there is nothing there, is frustrating, and a waste of time. I know there are those who consider their own time too precious to spend on such considerations. However, there are many readers of a post and just a single author, so the effort made is repaid many times over.

Regards,
Peter

 

[John King]

G'day again John

At the risk of sounding like "Topper" from the Dilbert cartoons....

Try reading a box full of EBCDIC cards from an IBM mainframe into a PDP11/70 that had only ASCII tape readers back in the early 70s. In the end I found someone with a Honeywell that had both tape and card devices to convert the data into a paper tape copy of the cards - which of course was a on-off format requiring some work at device level to persuade the PDP's reader to read the tape at all. After that the actually data translation - which my boss thought would be the hardest part of the job - was completely trivial.

The different word length of Honeywell and IBM (67 bit and 64 bit, IIRC) caused me some hassles at one stage. Used a Wang super-mini to 'translate' between them, as they would not talk to each other ...

Yeah. None of my bosses ever realised that the devil was in the detail ... the BIG bit, from their viewpoint, was really only the last moves resulting from a carefully thought out opening gambit ...

Anyway, enough OT nostalgia for one thread. Good old days? You can keep 'em - I'll take modern computers any day

And me also YEA. Programming NCR electro-mechanical accounting machines and Addressograph stuff ... ugh! At least you don't get greasy working on modern computers (mostly ... lol).

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
-- -- --

The Camera doth not make the Man (or Woman) ...
Perhaps being kind to cats, dogs & children does ...

Gallery: http://canopuscomputing.com.au/gallery2/main.php
Hints & Tips (temporary link, as under construction):
http://canopuscomputing.com.au/index.php?p=1_9



Bird Control Officers on active service.

Member of UK (and abroad) Photo Safari Group

 

[sphexx]

Good Day John

Don't know if this helps but ~ is Alt+n on my Mac keyboard - almost logical.
--
Richard

Lol! What do you expect, Richard? "Logical"? They are computers, programmed by logical humans ...

Maybe logical wasn't the right word. Isn't the tilde the accent over "n" in Spanish words? Also to my twisted pommie mind ~ looks a bit like an "n"

Cheers

--
Richard

 

[wooffy]

Am I the only one who had a good laugh over this thread?

Just move to vBulletin already and stop re-inventing the wheel. DPR might not be a decade behind forum technology then.

 

[synp]

I agree.

I do prefer inline or bottom posting, but Outlook and Blackberries have become so common, that the style the make you use - top posting - should now be regarded as standard. "Netiquette" has died in the 90's when the Internet became big.

I consider confuses your readers the most significant issue.
Following a common convention aids readability for everyone. When
most users are posting in a particular style, to choose a different
approach seems somewhere in the range of unintentionally confusing to
deliberately obtuse.

When posts grow to great length, as frequently happens, to scroll to
the end to find the reply, only to find there is nothing there, is
frustrating, and a waste of time. I know there are those who consider
their own time too precious to spend on such considerations. However,
there are many readers of a post and just a single author, so the
effort made is repaid many times over.

Regards,
Peter

 

[Soenda]

I do prefer inline or bottom posting, but Outlook and Blackberries have become so common, that the style the make you use - top posting - should now be regarded as standard. "Netiquette" has died in the 90's when the Internet became big.

I consider confuses your readers the most significant issue.
Following a common convention aids readability for everyone. When
most users are posting in a particular style, to choose a different
approach seems somewhere in the range of unintentionally confusing to
deliberately obtuse.

When posts grow to great length, as frequently happens, to scroll to
the end to find the reply, only to find there is nothing there, is
frustrating, and a waste of time. I know there are those who consider
their own time too precious to spend on such considerations. However,
there are many readers of a post and just a single author, so the
effort made is repaid many times over.

Regards,
Peter

--

The above reply by synp is top posting.

--
http://www.pbase.com/soenda

 

[Danielvr]

Thread titles in the forum index and the title of the first message in a thread still often show in yellow, suggesting that they are new even though they've been read. I'm using IE8 on XPsp3, threaded mode, flushed cache, temp files deleted, and am a beta participant. I hope this will be among the first things to be fixed.

 

[natureman]

I don't see why you and some others are making such a fuss about so-called top posting. For one thing, it isn't as though you have to leave the cursor where dpreview puts it, and for another thing, it doesn't fit the usual definition of top posting anyway. Top posting is when someone posts an ad and then reposts the same ad a short time later so as to keep the ad at the top of the page. I have never seen or heard anyone define it the way you do.

If someone wants to respond to particular lines in the previous post, they can move the cursor to the appropriate places, just like they always could. While there are some things that still need to be dealt with in the new forum format, we can't expect dpreview to cater to every little whim of everyone here, or to know exactly where we all want the cursor to be in everyone of our replies.

And since when did "netiquette" ever enter into anything around here anyway? LOL

Top posting is just plain rude, and enforcing it is rude squared.

To be fair, opinions are divided on that.

I'm relieved to see that opinions are divided on top posting.

They're not all that divided.

If a memo went out saying that it was rude, it missed my inbox.

Google netiquette "top posting"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php
http://danielmiessler.com/blog/internet-ettiquete-top-posting

I have intentionally top posted for certain messages for two reasons. The first is to keep the message I'm responding to in some way connected to my post.

That is better served by replying inline.

I don't expect readers to work their way through the same copy for the umpteenth time, so I just "append" it.

Trim it, and reply inline. That way, they don't have to jump around when the topic changes.

The second is because I want to be able to readily refer to the original post without changing screens.

OK, you've lost me there.

I never dreamed that anyone was experiencing my practical approach as rude.

Well, it was basically created by Microsoft and Blackberry users.

A few choice quotes from the first five hits on that Google search I mentioned earlier.

• annoying practice
• a Bad Thing™
• a practice spawned from Satan
• confuses your readers
• leads to reader irritation".

Since I broke my wrist back in January, I'm typing my posts mostly with a voice dictation system. It would be so easy to just leave the carat where the mail or forum software puts it. And it would be cruel to the readers...

--
Rahon Klavanian 1912-2008.

Armenian genocide survivor, amazing cook, scrabble master, and loving grandmother. You will be missed.

Ciao! Joseph

http://www.swissarmyfork.com

 

[natureman]

There's one real easy way to deal with signatures: BAN THEM!

This has been a public service announcement. Now, back to our regular programming.

These are automatically shown at full size and mess up formating.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read_js2.asp?forum=1036&message=32251285

Another case where message is still in signature as well.

 

[Charlie Self]

Those were not signature photos, but samples of a guy's first shots with a Pentax K-7 that someone requested he post.

--
Charlie Self
Meandering Mind: http://charlie-self.blogspot.com/
http://www.charlieselfonline.com

 

[Charlie Self]

Yuo should have read the previous message. LSD was posting those photos as samples, not a signature.

These are automatically shown at full size and mess up formating.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read_js2.asp?forum=1036&message=32251285

Another case where message is still in signature as well.

--
Charlie Self
Meandering Mind: http://charlie-self.blogspot.com/
http://www.charlieselfonline.com

 

[sphexx]

... it doesn't fit the usual definition of top posting anyway. Top posting is when someone posts an ad and then reposts the same ad a short time later so as to keep the ad at the top of the page. I have never seen or heard anyone define it the way you do.

I think you are describing "bumping" not "top posting"

--
Richard

 

[ngap]

Yuo should have read the previous message. LSD was posting those photos as samples, not a signature.

No, you should think about what I posted. I said that LSD had posted a message but because of the signature error it appeared in the signature section of the post.

Because they are in the signature section, they mess up the formatting.

These are automatically shown at full size and mess up formating.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read_js2.asp?forum=1036&message=32251285

Another case where message is still in signature as well.

--
Charlie Self
Meandering Mind: http://charlie-self.blogspot.com/
http://www.charlieselfonline.com

 

[Steve Balcombe]

I don't see why you and some others are making such a fuss about so-called top posting. For one thing, it isn't as though you have to leave the cursor where dpreview puts it,

The real problem isn't top- vs. bottom-posting, it's that the body.onLoad handler moves the caret after you have started typing. It happened as I was writing this reply, I got as far as "isn't" and suddenly the caret had been moved to the first line. Prior to this beta, a similar thing happened except that the caret moved to the Subject line.

Are the developers working on a local "testing server", or a super-fast central London cable broadband connection, and/or with ads blocked? If so, they won't experience the lag that real users do, which is enough to make this pretty irritating.

and for another thing, it doesn't fit the usual definition of top posting anyway. Top posting is when someone posts an ad and then reposts the same ad a short time later so as to keep the ad at the top of the page. I have never seen or heard anyone define it the way you do.

Just to confirm what sphexx said, that's bumping, not top-posting.

 

[Steve Balcombe]

I really do mean tiny - I doubt if you will want to fix it.

I'm using Firefox 3.0. If I use the spell checker add-on to correct a typo via the right-click menu, the correction isn't shown in the preview box until I key in (or paste) something else.

There, told you it was pretty tiny

 

[natureman]

... it doesn't fit the usual definition of top posting anyway. Top posting is when someone posts an ad and then reposts the same ad a short time later so as to keep the ad at the top of the page. I have never seen or heard anyone define it the way you do.

I think you are describing "bumping" not "top posting"

Nope, top posting. Bumping can be done by the original poster, or anyone else, whereas top posting can only be done by the original poster.

Notice that I said "ad". The only time I've seen the term "top posting" being used is when it's describing the act of posting and ad and then posting the same ad again shortly thereafter to keep the ad at the top of the page, or at least near it. It's a regular occurrence on Craigslist.

--
Richard

 

[natureman]

I don't see why you and some others are making such a fuss about so-called top posting. For one thing, it isn't as though you have to leave the cursor where dpreview puts it,

The real problem isn't top- vs. bottom-posting, it's that the body.onLoad handler moves the caret after you have started typing. It happened as I was writing this reply, I got as far as "isn't" and suddenly the caret had been moved to the first line. Prior to this beta, a similar thing happened except that the caret moved to the Subject line.

I think that that is really irritating, and I finally got rid of the problem by using Adblock Plus in Firefox. No more ads and no more caret jumping.

Are the developers working on a local "testing server", or a super-fast central London cable broadband connection, and/or with ads blocked? If so, they won't experience the lag that real users do, which is enough to make this pretty irritating.

and for another thing, it doesn't fit the usual definition of top posting anyway. Top posting is when someone posts an ad and then reposts the same ad a short time later so as to keep the ad at the top of the page. I have never seen or heard anyone define it the way you do.

Just to confirm what sphexx said, that's bumping, not top-posting.

Please see my response to sphexx above.

 

[ngap]

... it doesn't fit the usual definition of top posting anyway. Top posting is when someone posts an ad and then reposts the same ad a short time later so as to keep the ad at the top of the page. I have never seen or heard anyone define it the way you do.

I think you are describing "bumping" not "top posting"

Nope, top posting. Bumping can be done by the original poster, or anyone else, whereas top posting can only be done by the original poster.

Notice that I said "ad". The only time I've seen the term "top posting" being used is when it's describing the act of posting and ad and then posting the same ad again shortly thereafter to keep the ad at the top of the page, or at least near it. It's a regular occurrence on Craigslist.

Top posting referred to as by Sphex has been the convention since the Usenet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Top-posting

What you are saying may be an adaption of that.

--
Richard

--

 

[natureman]

Substitute the word caret for the word cursor in my post above. It's been a long day.

 

[natureman]

I've noticed that there are an awful lot of blank posts, apparently because people are typing their messages below the "--" signature line.

I'm surprised that some people don't look at the preview, or check their messages after posting them and edit them if necessary. Well, maybe I'm not all that surprised after all.

Some people probably aren't using the new format, so what they see in the preview is the complete text, signature and all, and they think that everyone sees the same thing.

The best ways to deal with that would be to ban signatures altogether, or force everyone to use the new format. Both would be nice.