📧 Top vs bottom posting in email

I was thinking about computing history this morning, and I wonder how many young people even know that bottom posting in email is even a thing? Some of the older OSS projects still have this culture, but I suspect that most emails sent today use top posting.

I find myself getting lazy and top posting, but it is so much more considerate of the reader (especially with modern email readers that thread messages) to bottom post and only keep the text needed to understand the context or your reply. The old emails are still in the thread and easily viewable -- there is no reason to repeat the entire discussion chain in every email.

Smart clients like Gmail somewhat alleviate this concern by hiding previous message details, but it often hides too much, and you have to expand parts of the old message to see what a response is referencing. And with top posting, you often have to repeat the context of your reply vs. just including your reply directly below the relevant context.

This is one reason discussions in Git* issues and other forum type threads can be so much more effective -- you can more easily follow the discussion over time. But you can get near the same efficiency with email if you take a little care.