A: It destroys the flow of conversation.
Q: What’s wrong with top-posting?

You’re missing the arguments main point. The main point of bottom posting is that it makes it less of a hassle to NOT quote the entire message at all! Why should you “have to re-read a full conversation before getting on with the latest post?” — Good question! Why are you quoting the full original post?

Regular conversations on the street do not sometimes last for weeks, if they did it would be understood to have a little context before you continue.

A: “Hey remember that project we were talking about last week?”
B: “Yes.”
A: “Well to hell with it.”

As opposed to:

A: “Hey… To hell with it.”
B: “Uhh, wha–”
A:
B: “Oh… uhh… that was unneccessary…”

The idea is to only quote what will provide context to your NEW comments. If I’m a busy guy and I have, at any given moment, something like 10-50 email conversations going on at once (not to mention real world conversations in between) then it is not entirely shocking that I might want to reread a little of what was said previously. In that case WHY would I want to scroll PAST the new stuff, find the relevant parts in paragraphs and paragraphs of old replies and then scroll BACK UP to read the new stuff… It should be inline, and it should be snipped to only include the relevant parts.

So, don’t be so literal. “Bottom posting” doesn’t mean to literally go to the bottom of every email to write your response, it means to be smart about what you are quoting in the first place and write your response with context in a logical way.

That said, keep in mind that for a 1on1 conversation where you are saying things like:

A: “Want to come over saturday?”
B: “Sure.”

It’s unnecessary for context at all so just stick with tacking your response on top, it’s simpler, the person wont need context (unless they maybe come back month from now to read the conversation) — it all depends on what you’re emailing about. Responding to a flame war thread RE: GPLv3 in the Linux kernel mailing list requires more thoughtful quoting/context than telling your grandma you loved the cookies.

Thank you,
Ryan

Interleaved posting (what most people mean when they refer to bottom posting) allows me to keep track of which portions of an email you agree or disagree with. Which portions you feel I should pay particular attention to. Which portion, exactly, you feel should be for my attention.

Unlike the previous poster, I am one of those geeks. And, also apparently unlike the previous poster, I have more than one email “conversation” I attempt to keep track of at any one time. And since I need to respond with an informed decision, view or opinion, I do find that I can not always remember the context of the issue under discussion in an email.

Expecting me to reread the whole email (and in reverse yet!) just because you’re too lazy or ignorant to trim to the relevant data is rude, obnoxious and arrogant. And it certainly tells me that the sender considers their time infinitely more important than mine.

With the current state of top posting the full email gets sent hither and thither, normally with a very informative and thought-provoking “FYI” or “I agree” as the only addition added to the top of the email. Well, either say something useful or be quiet, is my normal stance on that. Otherwise rather quote nothing and post “I agree” if you expect me to refer to the mail thread.

Or do the sane, civilised and respectful thing. Quote what exactly it is that you agree to or with, if you find that your sole contribution to the conversation must be an “I agree”.

Heh, I don’t agree with it. But here’s to all who do. :)

However, in a second post on the subject he says that by “bottom posting” he meant, as most people do, interleaving–as described here:

http://mailformat.dan.info/quoting/bottom-posting.html

If one is going to edit the original message down and insert answers inline, which seems a sensible enough practice–not quote everything and begin under it–I can’t see it matters if the cursor starts at the top.

But I’d agree that Mail assumes the user will be top-posting, because it doesn’t add sig-delimters to signatures and can’t recognize and strip them and the following sig-block on replies.

I found out recently that–surprisingly–Entourage, unlike Mail.app, has got signature-handling. So it seems not all of Microsoft is wedded to the top-posting paradigm.

http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/06/signature_blocks_and_netiquett.html