Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Are signature lines distracting?
Message-ID: <15068@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Date: 5 Jan 90 16:33:30 GMT
References: <659@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Lines: 22

Signatures are a matter of personal preference.  They can convey useful
information (return addresses in the official header lines can get badly
mangled), express personality, or all of the above.  The net would
surely be a poorer place if some drab Iron Curtain ethic forbade silly
signatures.

Some posters feel no need for a signature.  This is great, but the
appropriate response is to post as one likes best -- not to try to make
others conform to one's own style.

It is an important courtesy to keep signatures to four lines or less,
however -- virtually everyone agrees that wasting lots of bandwidth on
.sig lines is annoying.

Users who like having a signature but get tired of posting the same one
every time, might consider using a script to pick one at random.
Various tools for this have been posted to source newsgroups; it's also
a fun exercise in { shell, C, perl, awk, etc } programming to write
one's own.
-- 
There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a    || Tom Neff
rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure. -- Ross MacDonald || tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET