Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
I've been on USENET since 1989, and nobody ever fussed about
top-posting until the very late 1990s. People did whatever they
chose.
I've been on USENET longer than that and can say you are quite wrong.
Apart from a few maverics who were idiosyncratic on principle, or
novices who were quickly educated, everyone followed the practice
of inserting replies AFTER quoting what they were replying to.
Not doing it like that, or getting the number of ">" symbols wrong,
was sure to bring complaints. You can go to
http://groups.google.com and do a quick survey to see that I am right.
I think (but I'm not sure) that the practice of putting replies at the
top
began when some popular software (Microsoft, I bet) made that the
easiest option. That's when the real wars started, maybe in the late
1990s as you say, but the reason for the wars was that it violated
prior practice, not because nobody cared before.
Zero.
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