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Top posting has won because major e-mail clients (gmail) made it the default. When you hit reply, they add two newlines at the top and place your cursor there.

Top posting has won because major e-mail clients (gmail) made it the default. When you hit reply, they add two newlines at the top and place your cursor there. You really have to go out of your way to bottom post.

bestouff 7y ago
I distinctly remember Outlook doing top-post by default (and making proper replies tedious) way before GMail existed. That's when top-posting invaded everything.
- mshook 7y ago
  I kinda agree, corporate email clients made it worse. Lotus Notes wasn't better in my memory and it was THE corporate email platform back then in the 90's before Microsoft Exchange was a thing then Outlook at the end of the that decade.
IshKebab 7y ago
And that's pretty reasonable. What else should they do? If you're replying in-line you almost never want to quote the entire original message - if its very long you'll want to delete the bits you aren't replying to and if its short it doesn't matter where it goes.
- zeveb 7y ago
  > What else should they do? They should do what NNTP & SMTP clients did for years: prefix each line with '> ', prepend a line like 'IshKebab writes:' and place the cursor at the end of the quoted material.
  - IshKebab 7y ago
    But that just means people won't delete any of the quoted message and you'll end up with an entire thread of messages above the actual email, which is going to be very confusing for users.
    - zeveb 7y ago
      I don't think so, because as lazy as people are, they still want their words read, and they excise the irrelevant quoted material to set off their own words better. From experience of the old days, other than a handful of strange people no-one had a problem interleaving context and commentary. It was just the way things work. Top-posting is pure (albeit minor) evil, a tragedy of the commons and a wastage of space. It's also an unforced error: no-one was clamouring for it, but Outlook and Gmail and Notes foisted it upon the world.
      - IshKebab 7y ago
        In the old days everyone was a computer nerd.

bestouff 7y ago

I distinctly remember Outlook doing top-post by default (and making proper replies tedious) way before GMail existed. That's when top-posting invaded everything.

mshook 7y ago
I kinda agree, corporate email clients made it worse. Lotus Notes wasn't better in my memory and it was THE corporate email platform back then in the 90's before Microsoft Exchange was a thing then Outlook at the end of the that decade.

IshKebab 7y ago

And that's pretty reasonable. What else should they do? If you're replying in-line you almost never want to quote the entire original message - if its very long you'll want to delete the bits you aren't replying to and if its short it doesn't matter where it goes.

zeveb 7y ago
> What else should they do? They should do what NNTP & SMTP clients did for years: prefix each line with '> ', prepend a line like 'IshKebab writes:' and place the cursor at the end of the quoted material.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  But that just means people won't delete any of the quoted message and you'll end up with an entire thread of messages above the actual email, which is going to be very confusing for users.
  - zeveb 7y ago
    I don't think so, because as lazy as people are, they still want their words read, and they excise the irrelevant quoted material to set off their own words better. From experience of the old days, other than a handful of strange people no-one had a problem interleaving context and commentary. It was just the way things work. Top-posting is pure (albeit minor) evil, a tragedy of the commons and a wastage of space. It's also an unforced error: no-one was clamouring for it, but Outlook and Gmail and Notes foisted it upon the world.
    - IshKebab 7y ago
      In the old days everyone was a computer nerd.