Golly,

Top posting has been used since the very first email programs
were written... I was there.

Back in the day, people were using 110 and 300 baud connections,
and it was a real pain to have to download several pages of quoted
message only to see "me to" at the bottom.

Initially, this argument seemed to be a US vs Europe thing, and then
when the first non academic and government users got added to the
internet, the battle lines were drawn big time.

You don't expect the foot notes of a book to come before the text,
do you?

-Chuck Harris

Mike S wrote:

At 09:43 PM 7/29/2009, Chuck Harris wrote...

Really? You used READMAIL/SNDMSG, and exchanged emails with Ray
Tomlinson?

Bottom posting has been the preferred method from day 1 for USENET,
which is the medium most comparable to an email reflector.

It's interesting, though, that most top-posting MUAs insist on putting
a new .sig all the way at the bottom. What's the logic behind that?

People who don't trim are even worse than top-posters.

Arrgh!

Mike S wrote:

I did say this:
"I don't want to start a big netiqette discussion..."

Top/bottom is exactly the discussion I was thinking might happen.
(Notice, I did both this time.) I'm happy with both.

Sorry I sparked it.

That would be incorrect.

To use your analogy, bottom posting is like restarting a book at the
beginning each time you put it aside to do something else and close it.

Another reason for top posting, which is much more recent though: on the
Blackberry, long messages are truncated and you have to download the rest of
the message separately (click "more"), which is an even greater pain, so on
the Blackberry, top posting is VASTLY preferred.

Bottom line: some people prefer one way, and others prefer another way. Live
with it, be flexible. It's here to stay :)

Didier

Another thing, on the Blackberry, it is simply IMPOSSIBLE to bottom post or
in-line post because the handheld does not actually process the message you
are responding to, only the response, and the response is inserted at the
top by the Blackberry server software.

Didier

Oh CRAP,

Here we go again. Top, Bottom, left and right posting has been
debated on just about every news group since the beginning of time
(maybe diagonal also) ......LET IT GO!!!

Had
K7MLR

At 07:25 PM 7/29/2009, you wrote:

Top Posting, Mid Posting or Bottom Posting,
I agree to not discuss it extensively.

But why it is necessary to fill up the archive space with twice, triple or even
more times of:

I do not understand it. Can this be solved?

Perhaps it is wrong to just delete at least this part, but it does save some space.

HTML is very good for Internet information pages, but personally I have some
problems having to read through never ending Spaghetty Lines. Ok, when I trim
my mailer prog to show only a quarter of the screen width these lines get wrapped
to be readable.

I do not use the multi featured mailing programs. I want to avoid any hidden
codes to get active. I do only need just ASCII or ANSI characters for typing
text. Perhaps I am alone whith this behaviour...

Why not to use the different ways of posting all together?

When the response does follow more or less immediately I think it is not
necessary to rehash what I lready have on my disk. Perhaps just mentioning the
subject with date/ time may be sufficient. If there are doubts then I think to add the
previous text at the end is sufficient, even if it sounds to be more logic to put it
in front. In most cases I anyway step down immediately to the new text without
having read this known old part...

I find the Center Posting important when the mail is complex containing
lots of different points and statements or questions, but that does not seem to be
read easily either.

Thanks Rex for your mail and pointing to the WIKI I didn't know about.

Excuse me, ecause my answer is not specific to just one previous mail I just
do not repeat them.

Arnold