Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!steinmetz!ge-dab!codas!ateng!chip
From: chip@ateng.UUCP (Chip Salzenberg)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: The 4-line and 50% rules considered harmful
Message-ID: <211@ateng.UUCP>
Date: 29 Mar 88 17:14:07 GMT
References: <1501@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: chip@ateng.UUCP (Chip Salzenberg)
Organization: A T Engineering, Tampa, FL
Lines: 34
Summary: Make inews stupid so we can make simpler news readers.

In article <1509@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>In article <25590@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> lisper-bjorn@CS.YALE.EDU (Bjorn Lisper) writes:
>>Not to mention the obnoxious 50% rule for inclusion of earlier postings.
>>(Fortunately this rule isn't enforced at my site.)
>
>We don't want to see long signatures with pictures, US Mail addresses,
>phone numbers and quotes.  We don't want to see articles where the
>included material hasn't been compacted and summarized.

"What do you mean `we', paleface?"

Seriously, the only real effect of the 4-line rule has been to make posters
include their signatures by hand.  The only real effect of the 50% rule has
been to force people to use their own quotation symbols.

}}} You can't legislate politeness. {{{

>The big cost is the 3 seconds spent scanning and rejecting the useless
>article.

No argument here.  But I think the solution lies in smart news readers that
are sophisticated enough to recognize and hide quoted material and
signatures.  (I would like to bounce up and down a discussion chain; forget
this "try to decode the mangled quote" business.)

Note that if the 50% rule and the 4-line signature rule were not in effect,
these time-saving reader algorithms would be trivial!  But now that each
news poster evades the rules in his own unique way, we need "smarter" news
readers that cannot be completely successful.

--
Chip Salzenberg                 "chip@ateng.UU.NET" or "codas!ateng!chip"
A T Engineering                 My employer's opinions are a trade secret.
       "Anything that works is better than anything that doesn't."