On Sep 26, 12:15pm, Robert Ambrose wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Sep 2003, Kevin Buettner wrote:
> 
> > With regard to top posting, there are some situations where it is
> > perfectly appropriate, e.g, when you are forwarding something to
> > someone and want to add a note of your own to the top.  IMO, it's
> > also better to top post when you've added a few other people to the
> > CC line and you want as much context as possible left intact.
> 
> You replied, but did not answer the question.  I too am dieing to know why
> people are so adamant about top posting.  Is this a MUA issue?  I see
> you're using Z-Mail, does this interfere with features of Z-Mail?  Am I
> just one of the ignorant masses still using Pine and thus clueless?  

For me, it's not a MUA issue.  I'm guessing that the reason for most
top posts is that it's the path of least resistance.  I.e, I think
that most MUAs leave the insertion point *before* the quoted text.  Also,
as Alan Dayley has noted, not all MUAs will properly indent/prefix the
quoted text to make replying inline easier.

The reason I dislike top-posting (or even bottom posting if it's not
done properly) is that it takes significantly more time to figure out
precisely what it is that's being responded to.  If it looks like it's
going to be too much work, I won't even bother.  As noted earlier, I
prefer inline replies in which the responder has carefully edited out
the cruft.

Kevin