C# - Location of using statements

Question

One thing I have noticed a lot of back and forth on is where using statements should be placed in a C# code file- whether its in the outermost scope or inside a namespace. I

Answer 1

I'd never even seen/heard of this practice until I started using StyleCop and would get flagged by rule SA1200, which I now just disable. It's odd that the .cs files that Visual Studio creates as part of a new project violate this rule by placing the using directives at the very beginning of the file, outside of the namespace.