Re: [OT] top posting

["Paul Johnson" <baloo@ursine.ca>]

On Jan 14, 2008 8:21 AM, Ebanutiy Ebanatik Ebanatovich
<ebanutiy.ebanatik.ebanatovich@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry for offtopic but I'm wondering if the cause of avoiding of top
> posting is in something technical (e.g. to help forum software to
> create weekly digests correctly)

Yes, but not for that reason.  People might not receive the previous
messages in a thread for any number of reasons:  Message got bounced,
sorted to a spam folder, new subscriber to the list trying to catch
up, people browsing the archives trying to catch up quickly, etc.
Then theres a lot of people who receive

For this reason, bottom posting is just as bad as top posting when
replying to more than a paragraph.  Rule of thumb is to keep your new
to quoted text ratio below about 2:1, and intersperse your response
after the paragraph you're replying to, a la spoken conversation.

> or is it a question of etiquette?

Yes.  Don't make it harder for people to read the list by using
nonstandard quoting methods like top posting or overusing bottom
posting.  Conversational quoting is where it's at.

-- 
Paul Johnson
baloo@ursine.ca