post is post, but it depends on the definition of is

So Tim Gaden over at Hawk Wings (a pretty decent, and pretty oft updated Apple Mail.app tips site) – went and posted an epistle on the value of “top-posting” – the practice of responding to an email above the previous sender’s message. As this (the “top posting”, not the epistle) encroaches on what many consider good taste, and might even violate an RFC – you might expect he got some responses, even an ode to bottom posting.

After seeing both of these, and somebody’s postscript to a Mac OS X Server list thread to “P.S. please stop top-posting”. I decided that I had to respond.

With a call to the WAAAAAAAAAAAAHMBULANCE.

Get over it.

I have learned that effective net reading means dealing with both equally, and learning to comprehend asinine email threads with 50 billion cc:’s and a mix of bottom-posting and top-posting and even a few of those idotic confidentiality statements made up by lawyers with too much time on their hands.

It’s called reading comprehension. It all started with Pat and the Cat and the Hat in kindergarten.

And what’s more?

I top-post and I bottom-post.

AND I LIKE IT.