Eric Peterson wrote: > On 1/9/08, Elvedin Trnjanin <trnja001 at umn.edu> wrote: > >> But if everyone top posts, this isn't a problem. Rather than going from >> oldest to newest, why not in reverse? It makes more sense to me if >> you're following a topic as most do on a technical list. >> > > The link posted by Jim clearly states why it's a bad idea to top-post. > While it may (emphasis on MAY) make sense chronilogically, it usually > makes little sense in context since one may well need to read the > entirety of the posts to understand what the post references. This is > especially the case when a poster is responding only to a particular > section of a previous post. > > Cheers, > Eric > If we assume that the typical poster isn't clueless and know which parts of an original message to cut out or if they're addressing multiple points from an earlier message, they'll format their reply properly, then it would make more sense to top post. Why would you want to scroll all the way to the bottom to get the newest message? It also makes more sense when your (web)mail client has a message preview feature. But if that assumption fails, no amount of suggestions on formatting or style are going to help.