Let me summarize my points after reading all this thread.

1) We all agree that triming is important.
2) I agree that context-posting is better for longer thread
 if trimming and quoting properly.
3) I do not agree that bottom-posting is much better than
top-posting for long thread.
4)  I think that top-posting should be more prefrered for
short thread.
5) Lots of email clients by default tend to lead to top
posting. Are they all stupid? No. I think there are many
instanced that top posting is actually good.
6) The A: Q: A: Q: to educate people is counter-productive.
7) Email clients decide the style of posting.
8) Please do not think top posting are evil.

Another finding is that bottom-posting often lead to longer
emails. In the corporate setup, I think top-posting should be
preferred and I think it is.

A good one.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2003-September/msg01165.html

On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 12:59, ne... wrote:
> Could you please, please configure your e-mail clients
> to not top post.

Please let's not start a war.  Just deal with what people use unless
it's horribly wrong and could use correction -- then do it as a reply to
the offending post.  At the least a link to an authoritative netiquette
site would justify your request.  I did a quick google search and
quickly found that business users / newer internet users are thought to
be the typical top-posters (as an old internet user and a business user,
I can corroborate that).

Below are some discussions I found.  Bottom line: bottom-posting is the
norm for usenet news and should be the default (but not only) option for
geek email.

[Authoritative] Jargon Dictionary:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/top-post.html (note justifications are
mostly outdated)

[Authoritative] Dan's Mail Format Site:
http://mailformat.dan.info/quoting/

Origin of bottom-posting and anti-top-posters on Usenet:
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/quote.html

Slighty-pro top-posting rant: http://www.lionsgrove.com/topposting.html

Slightly-anti top-posting rant:
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_stv0.htm

Mozilla to allow (not default) top-posting & why:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62429#c77

Blind usenet readers don't like top-posting:
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_chr0.htm

Martin

PS--for the record, I'm all for top-posting on small threads like this
one.  rg's hopefully ironic reply to your post was a perfect example.

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