On 28 May 2018 at 11:48, Sean P. DeNigris <sean@clipperadams.com> wrote:

Dear all,

There were several posts in the "Beacon for Pharo 7" thread which top-posted
on top of massive unsnipped quotes that were several-previous-posts deep.
IMHO this made the conversation impossible to follow. This issue has cropped
up from time to time in other threads.

Please adhere to basic ML etiquette [1] to maximize our effectiveness. Two
essential guidelines are:
    1) snip quoted material to just what's necessary to understand what's
being replied to
    2) Post reply /after/ the quote from the OP, not before.

1.
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/mailing-list-faq/etiquette.html#idp55179976

e.g... 

Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.

>Why is top-posting such a bad thing?   

>>The lost context.

>>>What makes top-posted replies harder to read than bottom-posted?

>>>>Yes.

>>>>>Should I trim down the quoted part of an email to which I'm replying?

http://www.idallen.com/topposting.html 

Part of the problem is the way gmail and other clients *hide* the original text behind three ellipses dots,

so its not immediately obvious how much a thread has grown.

Its good to make a habit of clicking those dots immediately after clicking <Reply>.

cheers -ben