>  Because then people don't know what you are replying to.

Of course people know what you are replying to, and if they have forgotten 
(eg a reply to an email from weeks or months ago) then they just read below 
to see what the previous message was.

Just imagine this was an email conversation we were having here, and not a 
newsgroup thread.  You are trying to say we should post the same way in 
both.  Well what happens if I want to cc this reply to my friend Bob because 
I know he is interested in this sort of thing and will have a comment?  I 
will have to forward him a large number of different emails so that he can 
try and piece together the chain of events that led to the quote above.

The alternative is that we just leave all the replies underneath and write a 
reply at the top.  It's easy for everyone as they only need to read the 
first reply (or scroll down one or two pages if they have forgotten what's 
going on), but the beauty is that if I want to forward it to Bob, I just hit 
forward and add "Bob, see the emails below for details", and he instantly 
has the entire conversation.  Ditto if I want to cc him in on one reply, and 
then he can hit reply and add his comments too.

This is how email works in business, it just wouldn't work if you tried to 
do it like usenet.

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