Abstract
hybrid posting: use top posting to mark a leaf on the conversation thread, use bottom posting to receive a response.
Interleaved style: an extension of hybrid posting.
Some examples
Hybrid posting
From: god@heaven.org
To: gloob@litio.org
Subject: start thread
Will you have bought a new car before summer?
I was thinking in buy a toyoya \"hybrid\" prius.
case A: Use top posting to mark a leaf on the conversation thread
From: gloob@litio.org
To: god@heaven.org
Subject: RE: start thread
i don\'t think so.
> Will you have bought a new car before summer?
>I was thinking in buy a toyoya \"hybrid\" prius.
Result One email to close the thread with one response.
case B: Use bottom posting to receive a response.
From: gloob@litio.org
To: god@heaven.org
Subject: RE: start thread
> Will you have bought a new car before summer?
>I was thinking in buy a toyoya \"hybrid\" prius.
Toyota is a good brand of cars, I\'m very happy with it.
Did you check Lexus, too?
Result One email to continue the thread and inviting others to response it.
Hummmm….
So you are proposing to use top or bottom posting (just one of them) depending of the case, aren’t you?
I thought at the first place you want to use both at the same time/mail.
You need to think about mail threads as code branches.
When you want to freeze one branch just use top posting.
When you want to promote one branch and evolve it, just use bottom posting.
In this case, the structure implicitly have meaning, then with a visual you can check the branch thread state.
The problem I see with this design is the usual… the one is between the chair and the computer :-P
People doesn’t use to take as finished a thread just because somebody mean so. Actually, at least in maillists, most of the people like to have the last word, so putting a “mark” to finish the conversation could be seen as a challenge.
At least, that’s my experience with the maillists…
Anyway, I kind of use this. For short responses I use top-posting and bottom-posting for threads. But I use more inline-posting on threads because usually there are a few blocks of ideas or the previous mail is too large, so it’s much more clear to put the responses in context.
quite interesting… in fact i like it.