I asked list members to respond by pmail giving me their preference regarding answers to posts being above or below the previous portions of the thread.  Here are the results so far.

11 people:  put the new text on top, above the quoted sections.
3 people:  makes no difference either way.
1 person:  on top, unless the quoted section is very short.
1 person:  either, unless giving comments on several sections of the previous post, in which case put each comment below the section you are commenting upon.

If you want to be included in this informal poll, please pmail me to keep bandwidth on the list to a minimum.  If I get more responses, I will post the amended results to the list.

Bill in the Southwest