<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Wade Maxfield <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mythtvnz@hotblack.co.nz">mythtvnz@hotblack.co.nz</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On 1/08/09 11:31 AM, Barry Clearwater wrote:<br>
> {risking a flame war!!}Sorry Nick, but I really don't understand the fuss<br>
> about top bottom or middle posting!{/risk} Is it a mail client problem?
<br>
<br>
</div>A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.<br>
<br>
Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?<br>
</blockquote><div><br>This argument against top posting doesn't seem to be very effective - if people saw this as a problem they'd already be bottom posting. I think the reason top posting seems to becoming more common is that lists and mail clients are better at threading than they used to be. People don't see a lot of need for context at the top of a post when the reply is immediately below the replied-to post in their mail client (i.e. the conversation is already in the logical order due to threading). Also I think top posting is creeping into mailing list use because it's become very common in business and even personal email conversations where context isn't so important (since there aren't a lot of third parties involved in the conversations).<br>
<br>The best reason not to top post (IMHO) is that top posting makes it hard on people getting the digest version of the list. Those people don't get the list nicely threaded so it helps them a lot to get nicely trimmed messages with context at the top.<br>
<br>Cheers,<br>Steve<br><br></div></div>