Peter wrote regarding 'RE: [OT] Top-posting, is it really that bad?' on Fri, Nov 25 at 05:49:
> One argument in favor of top posting I didn't read about here yet. In
> medium to high volume lists top posting makes it a lot faster to
> determine if someone adds something significant to the argument and the
> posting is worth reading.
> 
> It avoids having to scroll down only to find someone gave a one line
> funny remark. It cuts down on time needed to sort chaf from corn and
> this definetely matters when subscribing to a lot of lists.

The scrolling problem is a result of quoting too much content in a
reply, not a problem of top- vs/ bottom-posting.  Proper context
quoting and trimming is just as important as using a reasonable
quoting style.

I subsribe to about 20 mailing lists, most of which have formally
defined nettiquite rules which include the suggestion to bottom-post.
That's not because members are holier-than-thou bigots who won't
listen to alternate viewopints, it's beause bottom-posting has simply
proven to work better for most people over a couple of decades of use.
I do not find those difficult to read, and the time it takes to hit
the "page down" button is less than the time it takes to read and
understand things in reverse order. :)

That said, the only reason I mentioned it to begin with was that
someone changed posting styles mid-thread.  That, IMHO, is the biggest
problem.  People should *not* top-post a reply and include multiple
levels of quoted context which is already bottom-posted, or
vice-versa.  Annoying as it is to read content backwards, it's even
more annoying to have to jump around.

--Danny
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