I've actually been in circumstances where having the entire farging conversation was nice. (They all basically boiled down to: shit happens, people are slowly added to CC list, somebody realizes "Oh shit! >>6 needs to know about this!" and adds me to the CC list. So, yeah, poor communication, but this happens sometimes in large organizations.)

The thing about top posting is that it gets readers to what they're actually interested in fastest: the answer to their email.

That having been said, top-posters have annoyed me since my Usenet days. stabs