Top-posting is no lazy per se Harlan.
As I keep pointing out to bottom-poster evangelists, my experience of people
who use NGs regularly (and let's be honest, to those that don't, the
argument is immaterial) is that they follow a thread by monitoring it,
reading responses as they come in, just as you are doing here. As such, when
a response comes in, I don't want to have to scroll through a whole heap of
responses, counter responses etc. that I have already read. I want to get to
the meat of what is being said, and by top-posting, that aids me enormously.
If I do need to refer back, I can easily scroll down, or read the previous
postings. I see no merits in bottom posting at all.
As far as I can tell, most of your argument relates to not snipping posts,
just adding a response to the responses already accumulated in the thread to
date. This is not a peculiarity of a top-posting, it is just as easy to do
in bottom posting. I agree with your dismay at this, but I own up to doing
it myself, and quite honestly top-posting makes it almost irrelevant (even
helpful if you do want to look back in the thread). But guess what, you do
it yourself, nobody is perfect.
--
HTH
Bob
(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)
