[WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Top-posting

Mon Sep 12 12:44:03 UTC 2005

"Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote in 
message news:f3fedb0d05091119023d54b0e3 at mail.gmail.com...
On 12/09/05, Daniel P. B. Smith 
<dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:

> > What I object to is the frequent _flaming_ of people for top-posting,
> > and to the inaccurate claim that top-posting is considered a major,
> > important faux pas in all Internet discussions at all times.
> [Random factoid: first usenet citations I can find are just on eight
> years ago. Which surprises me; I'm sure I remember it around when I
> turned up. OTOH, they reference a pre-existing culture - "You can get
> in a lot of trouble in the Netscape newsgroups for 'Top Posting'." -
> so meh.)

Off the top of my head, ISTR this was not unconnected with the fact that by 
default, most Microsoft products implement the "Reply" function in such a 
way as to encourage top-posting. It was often immediately obvious that a 
user was using a vanilla Microsoft product without having taken the 
slightest effort to research the proper netiquette, and was as much of a red 
flag to certain types of user as an AOL address. Many newbies were bitten in 
those days :-)

IOW this anti-top-posting was in some ways as much "anti-Microsoft" as 
anything else. The fact that you are referencing Netscape groups as a source 
of early information suggests that my memory for this might not be as faulty 
as I feared :-)

HTH HAND
-- 
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]] 