Let us be clear to start with that I don’t like top-posting, and that I even more don’t like the practice of leaving the whole of a thread of correspondence appended below the line or paragraph or chapter one adds to the top.
However, rather than simply saying it is bad and should stop, lets consider what it means if I send you a wodge of correspondence, with a comment and over my name.
Do we have reasonable grounds to conclude that if there is some assertion or fact or argument in the mass of text I’ve sent you, that I have not and need not have read it?
I think in some circumstances we do not, and life might be complicated in ways which simply excising all previous commentary except anything I wish to positively bring to your attention, whether by quoting it to you, or by commenting on it.
So chop it out.
Later:
In another place and under the Chatham House Rule (of which there is one, no s), a sage remarked that
There are many pitfalls associated with not trimming the long threads that can build up with top posting.
Scrolling through such screeds often finds things that I’m sure the most recent authors really did not want disclosed and which are sometimes used to great advantage.
Often early material has nothing to do with the current subject but people have just
been lazy using reply-all rather than starting a new thread as this is an easy way to copy to and cc lists which are intended to be *nearly* the same
in a new email. (AKM: This could result in secrets from one conversation being passed on to members of anotehr conversation, which could be very embarrassing. ).
It may also be interesting to observe who has been added to or dropped from the recipients as a thread develops.
AKM: A general principle remains, that sending something out over your signature whch you have not read is amazingly dumb.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/steal_this_comic.png