"Andrew Gray" <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote in
message news:f3fedb0d05091119023d54b0e3@mail.gmail.com...
On 12/09/05, Daniel P. B. Smith
<dpbsmith(a)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]]