Not necessarily keeping the entire thread - but certainly the previous
message in its entirely and perhaps several other steps back in the thread
if relevant. (The "snip" you see below is the block of text from my message
you had quoted in your reply.) Trimming the history is another reason for
top posting, by the way. Far easier to simply go down to the point in the
history it loses relevance and delete the quote from there to the end of the
message than it is to go line by line deciding what to keep and what to
erase. It's also a lot easier to locate the current message's contents if
they're in a group at the top.

An interesting analogy to email because I think that hits it on the head -
newsgroup postings are virtually identical to an exchange of a series of
emails that are in a public folder rather than a private mailbox, with
anyone reading it invited to contribute and comment. But the dynamic of the
exchange is the same - the only real difference is in its public nature.

Yes, I have software that maintains the thread structure. But only for
those messages that are still active in the server - when a message is
purged from the server its header is purged from my reader. I use both OE
and Agent and they're set up the same. Messages headers are grouped by
thread. No bodies are retained from session to session, only headers. Only
headers for unread messages are displayed.

For clairity, I'd suggest that top posting is first, bottom posting second,
and "interwoven" posting where the reply is interspersed in amongst the
quoted text is a distant third. That being said and contrary to some, I
don't think any of it is a "rule" that must be obeyed. Different messages
and different topics lend themselves to different styles and I find I use
all three, whichever I think will best communicate the thoughts at hand.



"David" wrote in message
...
....snip....

I would like to get this clear. Are you proposing that an entire thread
of discussion should always be contained in one message so that the
latest message always contains all the previous ones on that topic?

That _might_ be appropriate in an e-mail discussion between a few
friends but it seems to me it is totally wrong for a newsgroup. Does it
indicate that you do not have software that maintains the structure of
threads?

The thing I hate most is the one line comment added to a 1000 line
complex of messages. Bottom quoting, with just enough quoted for clarity
I find infinitely easier to handle. Since many messages contain
irrelevant dross keeping that hardly adds to clarity.

I agree with you there, especially if the one line is at the bottom. grin