Top Posting and Mobiles (OT From Re: [jdev] XMPP Ping/Keepalive: Recommended method ?)

[ennova2005-jabber at yahoo.com]

Ok - It's Friday and I will do my bit to keepalive this thread :)

I think we are in violent agreement on the thrust of your argument.  

My primary argument was not so much about data transfer but about the actual elapsed calendar time interacting with the message -specially when I am mobile and therefore resource constrained.  If the reply is on top I see it right away. Maybe it has enough context so I can stop there. If I need slightly more context, I can get the next X bytes and so on - which works if  the previous reply in a long exchange was also on top. If replies are at bottom, I do have to get the entire message before I can get the nuggets of wisdom that may appear at the bottom.  Given the round trip time for each request/reply  on todays mobile networks - you can see how it can become annoying.

On the argument that "humans dont read that way" - I do have a different take when dealing with messages at the speed at which we do now over IM/mobile email.  When I am in a fast paced exchange, I maintain mental context. In that case my mind is working like a "stack". The last thing I sent is at the top of that mental stack. If I get a response in some "reasonable" period of time my "call back listener" is able to interpret the answer without needing the whole context. I realize that the original respondent's comment was about newsgroups where things evolve over time. This comment is more about mobile email and how is used today in a ping/pong fashion - however many newsgroups/blogs/newsfeeds do get delivered over mobile mail.

That said, I am not a mobile email researcher - just an avid Blackberry user.



----- Original Message ----
From: Dave Cridland <dave at cridland.net>
Subject: Top Posting and Mobiles (OT From Re: [jdev] XMPP Ping/Keepalive: Recommended method ?)

On Fri Jun 23 01:47:38 2006, ennova2005-jabber at yahoo.com wrote:
> p.s  Answering below quoted text  is similarly annoying for people 
> with mobile email clients where only the first X bytes are 
> retrieved by default ;-)

Be careful about making arguments like this. There's always the risk 
that a bored mobile email researcher will be reading, and want to 
deconstruct your argument and analyze it. :-)

The implication of this argument is that the primary saving important 
to mobile email is data transfer - this is certainly a key issue, but 
not the only one. Round-trips are also considered critical - more so 



[edited]

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