On Thu, 22 May 2003, Matt G wrote:
> I agree.  I have never heard of this before either.  Either I'm out of
> touch, or it doesn't really matter.

Actually, this is a very old rule from the UseNet News days.
It used to be that you could count on getting flamed for
this form of reply, although I've never heard of it called
top posting, until now (seemed like a good name, though).

The rational is this:  When you post to a news server (or
to a mailing list), every byte that you include in your
message take up space on servers all over the place.  The
right thing to do is to edit out signatures and other
things that are not relevant to the point you are arguing,
and to put your responses to individual points right after
the quoted text upon which you are commenting.  The real
point is not simply to avoid top posting, but rather to
avoid taking up unnecessary band width on other people's
networks and disk space on other people's servers.  Top
posting simply showed total cluelessness or contempt for
the community.  This was back in the days when UseNet News
user's were typically aware of the fact that the forum was
there because of a lot of news administrators that were
donating their time and resources out of the goodness of
their hearts.  In these days of low-life-scum-sucking-
bastard-spammers it doesn't surprise me that most of the
people who use the Internet these days have never heard of
the traditional rules of netiquette.

I think you folks will find that most of us old timers
carefully avoid top posting and that we also avoid
including quoted signatures and quoted mailing list
trailers in our replies, even if we don't always make
a big deal of the mistakes that some of you youngsters
make because you haven't thought about the implications
of what you do.  Besides, when I was young, I didn't
really want to hear any older people telling me to be
polite and considerate, either.  We just hope you'll get
over it, someday.  8-)

<rant>
One thing I absolutely detest about Lotus Notes is
that it all but forces the user to top post.  Only a
bunch of clueless loser wannabe programmers could
ever cook up such a stupid MTA.  This is exactly the
kind of worse than useless application you should
expect from a company that only makes the user interface
for MS Windows.  I was horrified the first time I
realized that Lotus Notes was going to force me to
look like a clueless newby.
</rant>

Adrian