Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!ginosko!uunet!sco!davidbe From: davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: Signatures Message-ID: <204@scorn.sco.COM> Date: 24 Oct 89 17:48:47 GMT References: <283@dsi.COM> Sender: news@sco.COM Reply-To: davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) Organization: The Stolid Clever Ontologists Lines: 71 news.newusers.questions's own dan@dsi.UUCP (Dan Mick) said: -Okay, so I've been reading news for a month or so, and nine times out of ten, -the message has 20 lines of quotation, 10 lines of signature (or more), and -2 lines of new information. - -Why the h*** is this permitted? Isn't the whole point of netnews to be ever -cognizant of your information bandwidth? It's permitted because there's no way to stop it. And, even so, it's not encouraged; but there are no "net.police" to enforce such things. But if you notice this much quoting, I'd have to wonder what newsgroups you're reading. -Over-quotation is *specifically* warned against and rn tries to prevent it (or -Pnews, whichever), but I read lots of messages every day that pull back all -sorts of stuff that's not useful at all to the discussion at hand... Pnews tries to prevent the novice user from overquoting. The user who knows to set their RNINIT variable isn't bound by this restriction. Most of the time the "more new text than quoted material" rule is valid; there are times, however when a simple, short answer is all that's needed. -And are .sig files a total waste or what? [I don't want to see] -what *you* consider to be witty, along with -five thousand different ways to reach you on the net...dammit, I've got a -Reply-To line already, and an organization, and if you can't reach me that -way, you can use a phone book! In your case, I can't. The .UUCP is not a generally valid domain, and I have no idea who you talk to. From the path your article got to my sight by, I could *guess* that you talk to uunet, but I can't be positive. In addition, I use my .signature for a disclaimer; something that SCO requires I have (because, yes, these are just my opinions). -It's just amazing to me that the net community goes to such great lengths to -prohibit RTFM questions and "Me too" responses and even suggests policies like -"[ etc, etc ]" and then on the other hand, wastes so much space routinely with -such utter crap as .sigs and quoting and ASCII pictures in .sigs - -Then again, I never see much of the above from Doug Gwyn or Spaf or Chuq or -any of those who publicly announce things about policy...so maybe there are -just about 90% total idiots on the net?... Much of what of the above? Chuq has a 6 line .sig now, and normally has a quote in his. For that matter, everyone willing to go to the line for the net (and I'm not familiar with your name from any of the news.* groups) seems to have a .signature (not all, I'm sure). Personally, I don't see anything wrong with .signatures, as long as the information in it is useful, and the quote is reasonably short. However, anything over 8 lines, is excessive (IMHO [In My Humble Opinion]), and ascii graphics are a waste of electrons. But, to each their own. And if you include /etc/termcap as your .signature (as happened once) then I reserve the right to contact your systems administrator. And if you feel that a 7-line .signature is too long, you can feel free to contact my (or anyone else's) boss. That's the way of the net. [ A flame of this article may appear in alt.flame only. ] -- David Bedno, Systems Administrator, The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. Email: davidbe@sco.COM / ..!{uunet,sun,ucbvax!ucscc,gorn}!sco!davidbe Phone: 408-425-7222 x5123 Disclaimer: Speaking from SCO but not for SCO. "You know, it wouldn't be too bad for baseball if there were a small earthquake and Candlestick Park were to just drop into the bay." - me, an hour before the Oct 17 earthquake