"jlrogers±³©" wrote in message news:uNndh.7418 "Maxprop"
wrote in message
nk.net...

"jlrogers±³©" wrote in message
t...
Top post and save the world some time.

Somehow I presumed you were smarter than that. Guess initial impressions
can be deceiving.

Why do most newsreaders , including Microsoft's "Outlook Express" default
to top posting?

You've asked politely, so I'll give you a straight answer.

I don't know why Outlook Express defaults to top-posting, but I can guess.
Most emails are top-posted, so one can assume that when OE was designed, it
followed the email convention since it is an email client as well. OE is a
very old email client / news reader--even MS has come up with better
software in the intervening years. And OE is probably the weakest, least
versatile news reader currently available. I use it because it's simple and
cheap--it came with my bundled software. If I were serious about Usenet I'd
probably invest in one of the better pieces of software, such as Eudora.

As for top-posting or bottom-posting, the old adage "when in Rome . . ."
applies in spades. It is frustrating, not to mention cumbersome, to have to
deal with top-posters when the majority of the regulars in a NG bottom-post.
If everyone top-posted, it would conversely be annoying to have someone
bottom-posting. Almost everyone here bottom-posts. Jon, you, and a few
others persist in top-posting, which makes for absolutely no continuity in
reading long threads *unless* the person who responded to your post cuts and
pastes your post to the bottom, as I did here.

There is no rule governing where you post, just common courtesy.

Max