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. (People did fuss about not trimming down quoted material from previous posts, because bandwidth really was an issue). In the late 1990s someone invented some nonexistent netiquette rule about top-posting, and people wanting to feel like members of an ingroup began to lambaste newbies about it.
It just annoyed me because I had to scroll down to find out what he was talking about. Start reading, get confused, scroll down, cotton on, scroll up. Lots of people on usenet top-post and I wish they wouldn't.
-- Tim Starling