Regarding the "original first/reply last" vs "reply first/original last"
vs some hybrid discussion, just a quick "food for thought" item on this
aging thread before it dies...

I think any of the Internet Dinosaurs on this (or any other) list can
confirm that the "original first, reply either interspersed or trailing"
is the historical standard.  It is the newfangled mailers that insist on
trying to change the rules, but these days, getting a 72-col wrapped
plain text message without winmail.dat, .html, .rtf, or other "surprise"
is welcome enough that we don't care so much about sequencing but rather
HOW you send it :-)

The only "reply" issue I'd like to address is to please refrain from
quoting an *entire* original message, verbatim, especially with headers,
whether it comes first, last, in the middle, where ever it may fall.
There are some newsreaders and mail user agents out there that will not
accept replies that contain less than x% of added content with respect
to the original text.

Complete copies of originals add to the download time of the readership,
the load on raven delivering the bytes (minimal), the storage required
in the raven archives (about time to move the oldest year offline), and
time required to search the archives without chronological constraints.

Similarly, it's best to give "some" reference to what you are referring
to most of the time (e.g., include "some" text), which I just violated
:-)  But then I'd have to quote a significant amount of material of a
long running thread that should be all too well known by now.

Bit I digress, as usual.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled
mailing list :-)

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>
(wearing HP3000-L/raven admin hat)