(urth) Threadiquette

[Son of Witz]

On Jan 7, 2011, at 12:30 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:

> On 1/7/2011 8:25 AM, Son of Witz wrote:
>> On Jan 7, 2011, at 5:00 AM, António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com
>> <mailto:entonio at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Why not learn to use e-mail and write to the list in a sensible way?
>> 
>> While we're getting nasty...
>> How about all these multi-line adress signatures and favorite quotes
>> that take up so much space. Who cares?
>> I hate cutting those out all the time. Why put your signature on EVERY
>> email?
>> We've got your email address already. Save it for the occasional
>> reminder, not every damn post, please.
> 
> The list software itself puts a footer on the bottom of every post, so there has to be a footer, regardless. The decades-old convention has been to limit sigs to three lines following the double-dash delimiter. The delimiter is there so that correctly-configured mail clients (also freely available for decades) cut the signature for you. Is my freedom to have a signature less important than your freedom to chose your e-mail provisioning?
> 
> A signature goes on every e-mail for the same reason a signature goes on every piece of correspondence, homework assignment, receipt, court order, memorandum, artwork, t-shirt, etc. because once they leave the writer's hands they cannot be expected to be encountered in any particular quantity or order, or with any particular currency. I am occasionally contacted regarding single or even fractional items found years later.
> 
> Singature also change from time to time, and allow the author to provide other means of contact that may not be so mercurial as e-mail. I am sorry if this seems like a burden, but it is one you implicitly agree to as part of the social contract of using e-mail on the internet.
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
> Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
> < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >
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Hey, this is what I should expect for making such a pedantic gripe.

But dude, you are taking me way too seriously. Use your freedoms. Use your contacts. Whatever. I'm only talking about a personal preference.

I don't really think many of these emails stand alone. They are only really understood in a thread.  My snark probably seemed directed at you, but it wasn't.  Earlier the same day, i was trying to find some info about a font activation problem online, and found myself reading a list. One lister kept giving short, and even usefull replies that were 1-3 lines max, but she literally had 20 lines of sig & quotes coming up in every post. It was easy to see that she cared about the bill of rights, but having the preamble to the Constitution in every frakking post is just annoying.   Don't even get me started about attaching logos and smilies.

But man, I ain't trying to tread on you, I'm just bitching while we're moaning, or is it vice versa?
Dunnoh. 
~witz