Top posting

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Fri, 2010-06-25 at 14:20 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
> The best that can be said about top-posting is that
> it is better than bottom-posting without trimming. 
> Internal- and bottom-posting allow responses
> to be near their inspirations.

Agreed, but in reality either method would be acceptable if it were used
consistently and sensibly. Since bottom-posting has been the standard on
Usenet for basically forever, it's also the standard for many technical
lists including this one. That being the case, people who say they can't
be bothered or that top-posting is what they are used to are simply out
of line. If they want to propose a change to the guidelines, by all
means propose it and make a cogent argument. In the meantime, follow the
standard in the interests of clarity.

> Also, top-posting strongly correlates with a failure to trim.
> Rather a lot of the noise is quoted boilerplate.

Very true. Top-posting is the default in a lot of Webmail systems and
phone email clients. Also in Outlook I think (never used it). Almost
every message you see on these systems quote the entire thread in every
message. Lose lose lose.

poc