On a non-public mailing list I'm on, the perennial top-posting issue cropped up again. I wrote up a relatively long and detailed reply, which I now find I want to point someone else at. And it's another thing that fits the rant-cum-random-thoughts pattern of my blah.
Since the list is closed, I can't just point at the archived copy (I think archives are maintained, but if so they're not public). However, nothing in what I wrote involves anything private to the list, and the exact wordings of the bits I've quoted are not essential. So I've replaced all the quotes by paraphrases, fixed a few minor issues like typos, and have put the resulting text file up here. (See the second paragraph of this post for my reactions to the idea of HTMLifying it and inserting it inline here.)