The prevailing attitude was that top posting has won out precisely because modern mail clients did not have good features for threading, and as such new users did not get used to anything other than top posting.
We have mostly standardized on a new system, where mail clients default to including the full earlier message, and where they hide this quoted section by default.
I think top posting in mail has simply won out by sheer pressure of new users. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the default everywhere. Notice I’ve used bottom posting, or inline posting, in this comment (purposefully), and it seems natural. The context of messaging matters a lot.
I’ve heard the exact opposite! there was a hackernews post about this not too long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22801233#22810132
The prevailing attitude was that top posting has won out precisely because modern mail clients did not have good features for threading, and as such new users did not get used to anything other than top posting.
I think top posting in mail has simply won out by sheer pressure of new users. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the default everywhere. Notice I’ve used bottom posting, or inline posting, in this comment (purposefully), and it seems natural. The context of messaging matters a lot.