Top posting is useful for those who are actively following a 
thread.

Bottom posting is most useful for those who join late.

One might argue that the sorting out the order should be relagated 
to the mail user agent so that the user could select the ordering 
on the fly--would require some agreement on notation, flags, ... to 
ensure proper behavior.

Separate postings with no top or bottom posts can be threaded 
in any desired order but I'm not aware of any mechanism to reorder 
a message such as this one (which I top posted because I suspect 
that most who are following this thread are doing so actively and 
will want to get to the newest material quickly).

Also, please trim judiciously and leave sufficient material for 
those who arrive late.

Clint

-- 
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On Thu, 30 Jun 2011, Yasha Karant wrote:

> I respectfully disagree -- please jump to the bottom per your comment.
>
> On 06/30/2011 10:02 AM, Alan Bartlett wrote:
>>  On 30 June 2011 17:43, Dan M.<[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>> >  On Thursday 30 June 2011 12:30:08 Alexander Hunt wrote:
>> > >  Hi,
>> > > 
>> > >  I'm not seeing any issue with threading here; all of the subject lines
>> > >  in Yashas emails are relevant to the topic in the body. Just for info 
>> > >  I
>> > >  use Thunderbird as well, but the sl-security version.
>> > > 
>> > >  Regards to all,
>> > > 
>> > >  Alex
>> > > 
>> >  Here is the offending header portion:
>> > 
>> >  To: "[log in to unmask]"<[log in to unmask]>
>> >    Subject: How to use a local SL 6 printer with VirtualBox MS Win XP Pro
>> >    References:
>> >  <[log in to unmask]>
>> >  <[log in to unmask]><[log in to unmask]>
>> > 
>> > -->   In-reply-to:<[log in to unmask]>  <---
>> > 
>> >  Sender: [log in to unmask]
>> >  Precedence: list
>> > 
>> >  ----
>> > 
>> >  It's just good practice to create a new email and not reply wiping the
>> >  information out, as it not all email clients work in the same manner.
>> >  Much like sending HTML messages to a listserv.
>> > 
>> >  /Dan
>>
>>  All,
>>
>>  Whilst nits are being picked out, will you please also desist from
>>  "top posting". Trim the post to which you are replying and then
>>  "bottom post".
>>
>>  Alan.
>
> Under the conditions that "snipping" allows one to still get the full context 
> of an email history exchange -- often with information/comments interspersed 
> within the body of various preceding email posts -- then it is justified. 
> Otherwise, I find that I cannot reconstruct the detailed issues.  If there is 
> no interspersed emails, then threading will (more or less) allow your 
> suggestion to work.
>
> As for top or bottom posts, I and many others with whom I have discussed this 
> point over a number of years prefer top posting so that one can immediately 
> get to the new information, rather than going to the bottom of a perhaps 
> otherwise unintelligible set of exchanges.  The issue is akin to that of 
> reverse or forward chronology in a Curriculum Vitae.
>
> Yasha
>
>