[Techtalk] Top Posting (was firewire)

[Akkana Peck]

Rachel McConnell writes:
> I'm in the minority here, and i'm top-posting this on purpose to
> demonstrate... but how many of you reading this now really _have_ to
> read any of the rest below for context?  Top posting allows the reader
> to ignore the previous messages if they're following closely, but to

Now, how many of you had to wait to download 82 lines of message
(not counting headers) over a modem line, instead of only 9 lines
of original message if Rachel had not included all the quoted
material?  That's a factor of 9 increase in size -- in order to
download content that you've already seen.

Now multiply that by 500 messages (let's guess that as an average
for someone who's on several fairly active technical lists)
if everyone followed the convention of quoting everything.

I suspect that people who love top-posting, and quoting entire threads
unedited, mostly read mail on corporate email accounts or high-bandwidth
home broadband accounts, and maybe only subscribe to a few lists.   
But for lower bandwidth users, or people who try to read a lot of
lists, it really adds up!

	...Akkana