>Don't top-post on a list and if you quote the earlier 
>thread, please, please, please mark it somehow.

I think this is a personal preference thing. I agree that top posting
has disadvantages, but so does aggressive bottom posting.  Depending on
how good the respondent is at formatting, it can be very difficult to
delineate between the response from what's being quoted.

Proper bottom posting requires significantly more work on the part of
the poster, at least in Outlook.  There is no "cut and paste this text,
putting a > in front of every line, and putting a hard carriage return
at the end of every line, but not so far out that the line doesn't
wrap."  So the poster has to cut and paste, then put his/her own hard
carriage returns and > characters, etc.  

If we required (or strongly encouraged) bottom posting, then some people
might just not post, and we don't want that, right?

I personally find top posting fine as long as you're just answering the
current question at hand.  I use bottom posting when I need to address
several points in TOP's email individually.  If you want to see the
question that's being asked, just look at the latest top post below the
current top post.  If you want to see the original question, sort by
time and look at it.  It stands out rather obvious to me, even when
people start changing the subject line.  (Now THAT's something that
drives ME crazy, especially when trying to read a threaded response
after the fact.)

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