[H-GEN] Re: email signatures (was attached messages (was gmail won't let me talk tomyself.))

[Greg Black]

On 2005-10-04, Stuart Longland wrote:

> Ohh dear, we're not starting this argument up again are we?  6 lines is not
> all that long -- many disclaimers are longer than that.  (And yes, I'm aware
> that the official guidelines say 4 -- as a rule of thumb.  > 10 is yes,
> excessively long, but 2 over isn't too bad)

I think you may have misunderstood the point.  Actually, there
is more than one point.

First, this is not Usenet, so rules that applied there (such as
the one you quoted above) don't apply in the same way to mailing
lists.

Second, even though you may manage to squeak in past the strict
letter of the law with respect to some rule, when people on the
list in question point out that your actions are questionable,
then it's wise to stop and ask yourself if you want to become
known as somebody who doesn't care about the conventions of the
list.  Think about how you'll be perceived by others, and adjust
your behaviour to best fit in -- unless you don't care, of
course.

Thirdly, there are many good sources of ideas about how to work
with mailing lists, as Google can tell you.  Here are some URLs
that may prove helpful:

    http://www.gweep.ca/~edmonds/usenet/ml-etiquette.html
    http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05386
    http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_nq.htm

In conclusion, signatures here really should be at most one or
two lines and should eschew ASCII art.  And, as I pointed out
just the other day, if you must add a signature, at least get
the formatting right.  It starts with "-- " on a line by itself
(i.e., hyphen, hyphen, space).  This turns out to be in the
realm of the very difficult when using in-line PGP signatures.

Since these messages hardly merit the extra noise of PGP sigs,
the easiest way would be to drop the PGP sig.  If you must use
your informative sig and a PGP sig, then do the PGP part in the
modern manner -- multipart messages are involved in this.

Thanks for paying attention.

Greg