Well said!

"Steve House" wrote in message
...
Nothing to do with MS as a company nor invoking their name or authority.
Just saying that the abhorrence to top posting is not universally true on
Usenet and in many forums -- serious purpose forums where most of
participants are neither computer nor internet newbies nor technical
incompetents, with the MS technical forums being a case in point (unless
you
consider MS developers, typical MSDN and Technet subscribers, and MS MVPs
to
be generally incompetent newbies) -- it is the norm rather than the
exception. In most instances a format that resembles an exchange of
letters
or a series of articles by various authors published in successive issues
of
a journal discussing a point is more intelligible than wading through
quoted
text to find the sentences and phrases that are new to the thread with
that
particular message. Leaving the original(s) intact at the bottom allows
for
reference back should the reader desire and allows someone who is newly
arrived on the forum to see the history and context of the reply yet does
not force them to scroll through it looking for the relevant reply text.
It
also allows people who do not keep a message history in their newsreader -
I, for one, purge the newsgroups of downloaded message bodies each time I
exit my reader - to review the history without having to re-download the
message bodies yet consumes minimal time and space. The idea that Usenet
postings should be terse snipits made sense when each character was
relatively expensive to transmit compared to today but that's no longer
the
case.

Another point to consider regarding deleting quoted text - take a look at
your quoted message below. You have deleted the header information that
would normally appear about the first line (the line beginning "FYI")
showing that those lines originated with a message by me and as a result
it
appears that the thoughts in the top 4 lines that you are critiquing
originated with yourself. Which is clearer as to who said what - my
leaving
your header in or your taking my header out in order to save space? Top
posting with your remarks, leaving at least the quoted message to which
you
are replying, if not the entire thread, intact at the bottom makes
correct
attribution of who said what on the part of other readers much clearer.


"john smith" wrote in message
...
FYI - top posting is the current norm in many Usenet groups,
especially
the
MS tech support groups where I spend most of my time. With
newsreaders
like
Outlook Express, some people find embedded responses can be more
difficult
to read than the top posts.

Well, there's the problem!
Invoking the MS name and products explains everything.
Garbage in, garbage out.