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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!cbatt!cblpf!cbstr1!Karl.Kleinpaste
From: Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: .signature line limit
Message-ID: <186@cbstr1.att.com>
Date: Mon, 30-Mar-87 07:45:46 EST
Article-I.D.: cbstr1.186
Posted: Mon Mar 30 07:45:46 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Mar-87 07:20:30 EST
References: <1305@msudoc.UUCP>
Sender: karl@cbstr1.att.com
Lines: 53
Summary: A signature is a *signature*, not a bibliography!
In-reply-to: lawitzke@msudoc.UUCP's message of 28 Mar 87 21:31:03 GMT
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.37.1 of Wed Feb 25 1987 on cbstr1 (usg-unix-v)

lawitzke@msudoc.UUCP writes:
>   I think a 5-line limit is far more realistic:
>   Name                              UUCP address
>   Title                             ARPA address
>   Organization                      CSNET address
>   Mail Stop                         Office phone
>   City, State, Zip                  Home phone

This is silly, folks.  All the relevant pieces of this are already in
the assorted headers of every article.  We don't need it repeated at
the bottom.

[1] Your name is in the From: line.  (Mine is my mail address, in
fact.  Yours is probably parenthesized after your mail address.)
[2] Your title is not relevant to 30,000 Usenet readers - I prefer to
know you by the content of your postings, not the name of the office
you hold.
[3] There's an Organization: header line which holds (guess?) an
organization name quite nicely, and you can edit it when in Pnews or
postnews.
[4] Lots of us haven't got "mail stops" in the sense that it
identifies a place within an organization; my "mail stop" is my office
number, which is none of your business.
[5] City, state, and whatnot can be incorporated easily with
"Organization."
[6] Your UUCP address is already present in both the Path: and From:
lines (From: line preferred, of course).
[7] An ARPANet address is frequently the same as a UUCP address, e.g.,
this host is properly known as cbstr1.att.com, and I don't care *what*
transport mechanism you use to find it.
[8] A VERY small fraction of the planet has a CSNet address of any
kind.
[9] An office phone is going to cause you more trouble than it's
worth.  I used to do this, and I found myself getting really screwy
phone calls from all over the world (e.g., Scotland) when I wanted to
get Real Work done.
[10] Do you *really* want to give your home phone number to 30,000
Usenet readers, a large portion of which can be fairly said to have
(um) unusual senses of humor?

I freely acknowledge that items 2, 9, and 10 are my opinion.  The rest
are basic technical information already provided, or, in some cases,
providable if you care to put it to proper use.

I'm not really trying to beat up on anyone.  But I am awfully tired of
the increasingly cute, semantic-content-free, large, verbose,
repetitive, and redundant signatures people have gotten used to
including.  (Complete with unneeded opinion disclaimers and [now]
copyright notices with restricted distribution exclusion clauses!)  I
*like* the 4-line limit, and in fact I wish it were a 2-line limit,
just to cut down on the nonsense.

Karl