A.P. Lawrence

2005/07/03 Usenet is not a web site

Far too often now you'll find something like this in a Usenet post:

I disagree.  Your arguments make no sense.

And that's it.

Do you have any idea what this is about? Nope, and either do a lot of the folks reading the newsgroup. The post is completely devoid of context. You do have the Subject line, so you could go back through recent posts with that subject and you might figure out which post caused this disagreement. If you are a little more savvy or have the right tools, you can use the "References:" line. But that might not work either, because it's quite possible that the original post hasn't yet reached your newsreader server.

There are probably two reasons we are seeing more of this. One is that more neophyte computer users are discovering Usenet groups. I'm not entirely sure why that is - it may be nothing more than that Google has a "Groups" link that will do your search within newsgroups. Without that, a lot of these people wouldn't know anything about Usenet groups.

Perhaps Google is the source: many of these messages have the tell-tale "googlegroups.com" in the "Message-ID:" line of the header. If they use Google to post, they may have discovered Usenet that way. Of course other folks use Google too: those whose ISP doesn't provide a newsfeed, people traveling, and people who have someone learned about Usenet but don't know how to get a newsreader configured. But the folks who don't include context obviously don't understand how Usenet works: they seem to think it's no different than a bulletin board on a website: if they reply to a post, their reply will be properly threaded and the original post will be easily visible. More importantly, they assume that there is no circumstance where another reader could see their reply without the parent of that reply being available.

Of course that's not necessarily true with Usenet. The original post may arrive much later at other news servers, and sometimes may not arrive at all. That's why quoting context is so important. And that's another place where Google falls down.

If you read a post using Google Groups, and just hit Reply, Google includes no context at all. Google can do quoted context, but to get that you either need to either immediately hit Preview (before typing anything else) or not use that Reply button and instead choose "Show Options" and use the "Reply" there. Either of these will quote the original message, though sadly Google still leaves the cursor positioned for a Top-Posting reply, which is another sin that new Usenet posters are apt to commit.

That's not entirely Google's fault, and tt's not the end of the world; it's just a culture change: there's nothing inherently evil about top-posting. For some conversations, it's actually better, because less relevant material is lower on the page.

Some people, particularly newbies, find Usenet style confusing - it's why you'll see people at message boards saying that they hate Usenet. The same people get confused if you reply to them "in-line" in email. I've had customers write back asking why I didn't answer their questions. Of course I did, but it was in-line and they get confused. I make a mental note to always top-post when replying to them, and to use bookish quoting:

You asked "what is blah blah".  Blah blah is..

I think part of that is mechanical reading skill. Poor readers don't automatically go into high speed browse mode for lines beginning with ">" - maybe they don't even have a high speed browse mode. So they can't effortlessly pick out the lines that don't have leading ">" (and batten the hatches if they have to put up with it and someone changes the quote character - oh my!).

It's hard for them to tell what's going on - bottom posting is probably easier for them than in-line, but even bottom posting is hard because they have to look very carefully to see where the new text starts. People with poor reading skills are the ones most likely to tell you that they "haven't figured out this computer stuff yet".

There is also a relationship between poor reading, poor spelling and dislike of Unix command lines. Poor typing skills don't seem to matter (plenty of one finger Unix typists around) but poor readers don't like text interfaces and poor spellers sure don't like command lines.

But - all that aside - top posting is just a cultural thing. It's nothing to do with written language flow, it does have advantages, but "we" don't like it. And because this is what the majority is used to and expects, visitors should follow the convention or risk anger. At least while they are still the minority.

But they won't be the minority for much longer. It seems that tradional Usenet can't last. While the "old guard" is still there, those folks will be dropping away over the next decade or so, and new folk are coming in droves every day. The new folks may learn to quote context now and then, but if they do, they'll probably top-post. So I expect that Usenet will slowly change and will look very different twenty years from now.

Psst - Wanna work for yourself?

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