Signature at the top of the message? Especially when replying... possible?

Signature at the top of the message? Especially when replying... possible?

Is there a setting I can change that adds my signature to the top of the message or above any previous emails when I reply to a message? I end up always having to cut my signature from the bottom of the email and paste it at the top, under my new email.

Example:

Hello,

My new email

[Sig should be here]

>
>>
>>> OLD EMAIL
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

--
Thank You,
My Signature!

What you're searching for is commonly called top posting and a terrible habit. Anyways, there are ways to help doing what you want to do, but because it's a terrible way of replying (did I mention that before?) it's not too convenient. Check out some of these threads: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/search.dml?term=top+posting&username=&exactusername=Y&mode=forum&datemodifier=newer&limitdate=365&disp=thread&submit=+Search+&id=32

The easiest way is to create a note and then in an email right-click and choose "insert - note - ..."

Originally posted by flipjarg:

[Sig should be here]

It's not possible to have a true sig if you top post as it will make everything below the sig be part of the sig, which will cause everything to be grayed out and even stripped on reply. So, if you top post, you can't use:

-- 
Name

as your sig. You can use a fake sig like

Name

or

--Name

though.

Also, both bottom-posting and top-posting are bad because when you reply, you're just typing a bunch of responses to a bunch of thoughts in the original message, which causes major discontinuity when reading as it can be ambiguous as to what part is responding to what. This also causes major scrolling back in forth if you have to refer back to the quoted text for each response.

Top-posting is even worse than bottom-posting because then you have to read things from bottom to top, which is just goofy backwards.

You should be using natural interleave/inline posting where you quote one part of the original message, respond to that part below it, quote another part and respond below that etc. and end with your signature.

Top-posting is also goofy with signatures as you're signing the message in the middle of the letter instead of at the end.

You should also trim what you quote so you're only including what you're responding to.

Remember that emails are letters. When you reply, you're writing a new letter that quotes things from the letter you received. You're not supposed to write a whole new letter and tack it onto the top of the letter you received and send both.

Originally posted by flipjarg:

Signature at the top of the message? Especially when replying... possible?

It's possible to add a fake signature when replying up top. But, then, you'll have a real signature at the bottom (which would be goofy to have 2 signatures) unless you disable the real signature. But then, you won't have a signature at all when compose new messages.

If you want to do that though, despite it being completely wrong, what you do is:

1. Clear the signature for the account in the signature editor.

2. Close down Opera and open accounts.ini in the mail folder with a text editor.

3. Edit the Reply= line for the account and add something like: \n\nName\n\n or \n\n--Name\n\n (no space after the -- since this needs to be a fake signature) to the beginning of the value that's already there.

Thanks for the replies!

I agree, top posting is not good. I work in customer service and have only seen one person bottom post a reply... so to keep things in chronological order, I top post. This way I do not have to search for previous emails and I have record of what was previously said.

I will be following these easy steps! Thanks!

It's possible to add a fake signature when replying up top. But, then, you'll have a real signature at the bottom (which would be goofy to have 2 signatures) unless you disable the real signature. But then, you won't have a signature at all when compose new messages.

If you want to do that though, despite it being completely wrong, what you do is:

1. Clear the signature for the account in the signature editor.

2. Close down Opera and open accounts.ini in the mail folder with a text editor.

3. Edit the Reply= line for the account and add something like: \n\nName\n\n or \n\n--Name\n\n (no space after the -- since this needs to be a fake signature) to the beginning of the value that's already there.

Originally posted by flipjarg:

This way I do not have to search for previous emails and I have record of what was previously said.

Turn on threading. All messages will be in the thread nested in an orderly fashion. There's no searching needed then. A single message isn't meant to provide a history of all previous messages.

Originally posted by flipjarg:

I agree, top posting is not good. I work in customer service and have only seen one person bottom post a reply

You can kindly suggest a link to posting guidelines. Doing so is perfectly acceptable. Then, if they don't follow them and they top or bottom post instead of posting inline, when you reply, *you* should still trim and still post properly by replying inline and quoting properly. And, because this is customer service, it's even more important that you reply properly. Customer service shouldn't be an excuse to reply incorrectly.

Originally posted by flipjarg:

I will be following these easy steps! Thanks!

Awesome. You can of course do it any way you want. Just wanted to explain how it works.

Originally posted by burnout426:

You can kindly suggest a link to posting guidelines. Doing so is perfectly acceptable.

Sadly, it's not acceptable. Customer's always right, you know, and when you're working in customer service, getting some guy who's furious about something that went wrong, you can do harm by saying "why don't you follow this guideline in the future?"

But what you can do is reply inline.

Originally posted by WildEnte:

when you're working in customer service, getting some guy who's furious about something that went wrong, you can do harm by saying "why don't you follow this guideline in the future?"

It's not like we're not used to having to follow procedures to get customer service. But:

I mean something friendly like a "Please follow these posting guidelines so we can better serve you (or "for a better customer service experience")" type of link by the contact form/mailto link and as part of a signature.

You still help them no matter what.

Customer service aside, I love how the Squirrelmail mailing lists are. You either post correctly or get your ass chewed out and lose the chance at getting help or getting your patch accepted etc. It's great. It makes the list easy to read and follow.

Originally posted by WildEnte:

But what you can do is reply inline.

Correct.

Gah, Opera is STILL beating this old horse? I thought we all learned a lesson when Opera was extremely strict on how webpages were rendered making many people say "Opera? Don't use it, <page.com> doesn't work!". Nowadays Opera even do client side hacks to make pages work even when the hosts fuck up (Facebook a million times for instance). What did we learn? The users are ALWAYS right.

Now to email. I get that tech-geeks with a long history of mailing lists want inline or bottom replies and feel it's the only "correct" way to email, the whole rest of the world however use top-posting. I usually go through 30-50 business-related emails each day and I can count on one hand the amount of people that replies inline or bottom-post, not each day, but each YEAR! If you google top-posting you'll soon find that that's what most of the world prefers. When opening a new email you probably remember what it's about from the subject-field and can then read whats new right there and then, without scrolling through shit you've already read or even written yourself. Stop looking at the signature as the end of everything and that whatever's below it is the rest of the sig. Think of the sig as a block, just conveniently inserted at the top instead of the bottom.

So, Opera: Make top-posting the default behavior and have a "I'm a geek that tries to impose my view on whats right on the majority, stasi-style!"-button for the 100 people left in the world that doesn't top-post.

Originally posted by thklinge:

So, Opera: Make top-posting the default behavior and have a "I'm a geek that tries to impose my view on whats right on the majority, stasi-style!"-button for the 100 people left in the world that doesn't top-post.

This is bug DSK-312394 (based on my proposal in <http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=718352>.) and bug DSK-265318.

Hopefully something can be done about this. I love me some options.

Originally posted by thklinge:

I usually go through 30-50 business-related emails each day

I read through about the same amount of top posted business related emails each day and all of them are top posted. It's a P-A-I-N and everyone agrees. But it's how Lotus Notes works, it's how Outlook works, and so it's how everyone works even though it's utter crap.

I particularly love these emails:

--- /snip ---
Subject: Re: AW: Wg: Antwort: Fw: AW: Re: AW: short question

Hey WildEnte, can you take care about this?

** Signature Level III Marketing **

Hey Marketing, we're running out of ideas here. We need a dev to handle this one.

** Signature Level III support **

No, now the device goes blurp instead of beep. Still not happy!

** Signature customer **

No, it's not. Please try <solution 3> instead.

** Signature Level III support **

The device started to stink and I saw some smoke come out. Is that a good thing?

** Signature customer **

and so on and so on
--- /snip ---

.... you get the picture. I regularly get emails like this, and (after letting off some steam on the phone) I have to print the mail, fetch 3 different colored text markers and start reading back to front to figure out what's going on.

Top posting stinks. It's not that users want it, it's what is given to them by the programs used in business. It's like saying that everyone *wanted* IE. That's clearly wrong. It was the default, and people who don't care enough don't do anything about it.

Anyway, I agree with burnout426 - options are good. The sad reality is that the worst email is one where different folks used different reply styles and you have to read the email from the middle out. But top posting and bottom posting are still crap.

Originally posted by thklinge:

So, Opera: Make top-posting the default behavior and have a "I'm a geek that tries to impose my view on whats right on the majority, stasi-style!"-button for the 100 people left in the world that doesn't top-post.

+1

How do you turn on threading?

Originally posted by burnout426:

Originally posted by flipjarg:

This way I do not have to search for previous emails and I have record of what was previously said.

Turn on threading. All messages will be in the thread nested in an orderly fashion. There's no searching needed then. A single message isn't meant to provide a history of all previous messages.

Originally posted by flipjarg:

I agree, top posting is not good. I work in customer service and have only seen one person bottom post a reply

You can kindly suggest a link to posting guidelines. Doing so is perfectly acceptable. Then, if they don't follow them and they top or bottom post instead of posting inline, when you reply, *you* should still trim and still post properly by replying inline and quoting properly. And, because this is customer service, it's even more important that you reply properly. Customer service shouldn't be an excuse to reply incorrectly.

Originally posted by flipjarg:

I will be following these easy steps! Thanks!

Awesome. You can of course do it any way you want. Just wanted to explain how it works.

Originally posted by 777mikejody:

How do you turn on threading?

Click the view button above the message list and choose "threaded" instead of "flat" (second option from top in case your system is not english)

Got it, thank you. What does selecting this option do? Would you be able to show a comparison at all?

On flat view you have something like:

-message 1
-message 2
-reply to message 1
-message 3
-message 4
-reply to message 2

On threaded view you have:

-message 1
   -reply to message 1
     -reply to the reply
   -another reply to message 1
-message 2
-message 3
  -reply to message 3

It's very useful when you are on a mailing list or when lots of people are replying to a message.

OK got it, that is very helpful. Thank you.

Maybe it should be added that in threaded mode, the filter (also 'received'!) will also show both received AND sent emails - otherwise the threads would be broken. That's implicitly mentioned in what LeoCG said above, but I thought it was worth pointing it out.

I tend not to use threaded mode because I'm old and inflexible. Instead, when I need to see the entire thread of an email, I right-click the mail and choose "Follow/ignore --> follow thread". That creates a new filter in the panel (section "followed threads") with only this thread in threaded mode.

Moderator edit: This comment has been removed for breaching our terms of use. No multiposting, please

Please do not post the same thing on a lot of topics.