Oh, and while I'm ranting about top-posting, there's another reason why it's shit. Speaking from experience, it makes searching email archives awful.
I've been in the position of having to go through email archives looking for relevant email discussions related to a legal dispute. Trying to search for key words is far less effective with top-posting and no trimming, as the volume of text you need to deal with increases as (roughly) the square of the number of emails: A emails B: ~ Hey! B replies: ~ Hey yourself! ~ > Hey! A responds: ~ Wazzup dude? ~ > Hey yourself! ~ >> Hey! And B responds: ~ Just chillin. And you? ~ > Wazzup dude? ~ >> Hey yourself! ~ >>> Hey! And the reply: ~ Working hard man. Or hardly working LOL LOL LOL ~ > Just chillin. And you? ~ >> Wazzup dude? ~ >>> Hey yourself! ~ >>>> Hey! One last response from B: ~ OK catch u later. ~ > Working hard man. Or hardly working LOL LOL LOL ~ >> Just chillin. And you? ~ >>> Wazzup dude? ~ >>>> Hey yourself! ~ >>>>> Hey! Total lines: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 21 which is given by n*(n-1)/2 or O(n**2). Now imagine that each email contains at least one paragraph of text, plus (oh joy) an email disclaimer, plus (say) a ten line signature, *all* of which is typically commented because gods forbid that people use a signature marker "-- "[1] or that email clients trim anything below it when present. Me, bitter? Whatever gave you that impression? [1] Yes the trailing space is significant. -- Steven “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
