Lead us not into the temptation of starting yet another thread on
top/bottom/side/middle/inside/outside posting.
Deliver us from the wrath of those who are displeased with whatever methods
we use.
For we shall choose to post in whichever manor is appropriate to the
particular message and/or our preferences.
Let us forgive those who post (chose one) top, bottom, middle, sideways as
we forgive those who criticize our posting methods.

Let's move on gentlemen, (and ladies)....

It's *NOT* "bottom posting.  It's called "quote and respond".  As
Robert pointed out, it makes communication far clearer.  As long as
you aren't willing to make yourself clear, why bother answering your
(ill-formed and over-general) questions?

Nien.

...not even a proper .sig.

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Ben Myers <ben_myers_spam_me_not@charter.net> wrote in part:

What mix?  I see you advocating.  Nothing will be accepted by all.
The convention here in csiphc is quote-and-respond for excellent
reasons.  The only reason I've seen advanced for top-posting USENET
is speed/lazyiness.  I find that utterly unconvincing.

I do not want or need such responses, and routinely skip them
since they take excessive effort in understanding -- I have to
find what precisely the top post is referring to.  A person making
such posts might save themselves time (I doubt it, q&r is quicker
since references don't need to be written) but costs their [many]
readers more time and effort.  I consider that selfish and less
likely the content is worth the trouble.

Top posting is essentially the modern-day equivalent to the
depracated me-too post.  Do you understand why?

Close enough, but technology has not changed in any essential way.
People still write text.  Posts flow.  Sure, computers have gotten
faster.  This does not change posting nor the S/N requirement.

Perhaps you are not a native english speaker, but that
idiom [expression] is used by a mediator, not an advocate.
AFAICS, you are advocating top-posting.

Civility is unrelated.  Completely orthogonal.  It is quite
possible to be rude in q&r.  And possible to be polite in
top-posting.  But frankly seldom seen since top posting in
a q&r forum already is impolite and likely to persist.

-- Robert

OK.  But you're still lazy.

<8e4283pm6neuieq4het7cohu9m71ciqsek@4ax.com>:

If everybody top-posted, including entire previous articles, each article
would include the entirety of the thread to date, along the particular
route taken to that article. The fiftieth article in a thread would
contain 49 previous articles. A linear thread, with no branches, would
expand in storage size (in megabytes) as one-half the square of the number
of articles, so that a thread of 100 articles would require storage space
for 5,000. The actual expansion would be less because of branching, but
don't forget that threads can go on for more than 100 articles.

News spools would fill up and crash, articles would disappear before they
appeared, and new threads would be choked off. Those who still download
articles over a phone line would be unable to download these articles,
with their vanishingly-small fraction of new, unduplicated content, as
fast as they appeared, if they appeared at all. Usenet would cease to
function with its current carrying capacity. Consequently, a rational
being would not want a top-posting, all-inclusive posting style to become
a universal norm. The very existence of threaded newsreaders and the
availability of past articles on news spools indicates that such a scheme
has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

It doesn't work if everyone does it. But then again, you think you're
special, don't you? When you start at the  top, you should start trimming
text until you come to something relevant that you wish to address, reply
to, or expand on. Then move your cursor below that, text, hit "enter" to
leave a blank line, then start typing. Leave blank lines between
paragraphs, and after your text before you (delete irrelevant material
and) include another point to be addressed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This is what we find most readable. For you to tell us that we should
alter  our reading habits to suit your posting style (presumably, to be
bopping back and forth between new and included old text) is just plain
rude. You are welcome to your opinions as to what is efficient in posting,
but you are not welcome to act on them here, and you are especially not
welcome to pretend that your opinions are as good as anyone else's. You
think of yourself as an individualist, standing up for your opinions in
the face of the stodgy old fuddy-duddies that infest this group. You may
even feel that your way of thinking will provide a breath of fresh air for
those who choose to inhale it. But what you're really doing is farting on
the elevator and haughtily informing the other passengers that you're free
to do so, that you intend to laugh at their expressions of distaste, and
that they really ought to be enjoying your contributions anyway.

What you have failed to realize it that you have stumbled into a
community, and that communities have standards and traditions. These don't
have to make sense to you, but you do have to be aware that you, having no
standing in the community, are unlikely to drop in and change these
traditions instantly because it suits you to do so. You are free to tell
us that you want to top-post and fail to trim your followups. You are free
to go to an Orthodox synagogue and tell the worshippers coming out of a
service that they really should be following Jeezus and enjoying a nice
slice of Easter ham. You are free to partake of a traditional meal in an
Arab country and eat from the common food bowl with your left hand (the
traditional butt-wiping hand) and brush off any polite hints or
instructions to the contrary. You are free to go to Paris, Munich, Tokyo,
Madrid, or Rome and accost random locals in English, making no attempt to
speak even a broken version of their own language, but instead affecting
an attitude that makes it clear that you think it their duty to undertake
years of language study so that they may assist you with no undue
inconvenience to yourself.

In all of these, you would have the same effect:  you would mark yourself
as an ignorant, selfish, self-absorbed boor who thinks that everyone,
everywhere should adapt themselves to suit your own childish whims. You
see, we care to a finite extent about top-posting. But we care a great
deal more about dispensing with morons who have neither the common sense
nor the common courtesy to fit in with local custom, and top-posting
provides a convenient moron detector. The custom itself is of minor
importance, but around here, dispensing with morons is both a critical
activity and a pleasant diversion. We enjoy our gardening here, and you're
a weed. You may be tempted to affect a bemused attitude and sling some
epithets. If you do, at least try to be somewhat original.

But if you have any interest in hanging around here and having your
opinions taken seriously, you've got to get with the program, and learn to
post properly--not just because it's easier to read, but because you are
not important enough to force everyone else to read articles posted in
your own lazy, selfish manner.

You have three choices:

You can adapt. If you enjoy the conversations here and would like to
participate, this is required.

You can leave. This would be an intelligent course of action, if you have
no interest in changing your posting style, and don't want to waste your
time hanging around where you're not wanted.

Or, you can persist, and try on the one hand to take part in
conversations, while on the other, telling a group of people that their
way of doing things is wrong or not important, and that your opinion on
the matter is more important than the collective opinion of the whole
goddamn group. You can continue to gather flames and killfile entries, to
get whatever jollies you might by acting like an a.shole and seeing people
point this out. You might think of yourself as an outsider, a maverick who
tweaks the nose of the stodgy, but the truth is you would simply join a
long and ignoble collection of brain-donors, common as cowshit in a
pasture, who, apparently unable to garner any positive attention, seem to
feel a need to resort to attracting negative attention, probably stemming
from a deep-seated fear of getting no attention of any kind and fading
away into insignificance.

The choice is yours, Benny-boy. What's it gonna be?

Ben Myers top posted:

Put what so eloquently, top poster?

(Scroll down for remainder of message)

Plonk!

sheep pimp?  Boy, that is a low blow Stew!  :)

Now I feel a little sheepish for unwittingly getting people to go off on a
tangent about top- and bottom-posting.   Bahhhhhhh!   How about Post-It notes,
instead?   ... Ben Myers