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

Stuart Longland redhatter at gentoo.org
Tue Oct 4 00:59:06 EDT 2005


Replying inline -- I hope I've fixed my ways this time.

Greg Black wrote:
> 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.

Quite possible -- I tend to take things literally, this is just my
nature.  I try to control this, but don't always succeed.

> 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.

Understood. :-)

> 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.

Again, understood.  Sometimes it's not clear where exactly the line is.
 However, after a quick discussion on IRC, hopefully I've rectified this.

> 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

I was working on RFC1855, which does cover mailing lists -- I try to
stick to these rules as much as possible, however my understanding of
these rules may not necessarily agree with others' understandings of the
same rules.

> In conclusion, signatures here really should be at most one or
> two lines and should eschew ASCII art. 

I read 65 characters wide, 4 lines high -- and so I try to stay within
those limits.  Mind you, what constitutes ASCII art varies.

I'll agree though, the signature in question (which I have fixed)
definately had lots of ASCII art in it.

> 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.

Yes, I'll have to figure out how to enable PGP/MIME in SquirrelMail.
This isn't a problem here at home, where I use Thunderbird.
(SquirrelMail can decode PGP/MIME messages, and can probably create them
too -- just haven't bothered to look that deeply)

> 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.

I digitally sign emails for anti-spam and verification purposes.  I have
had my email addresses used in sending spam (and been flooded with
bounce messages as a result) in the past, but very few spammers are
willing to go to the trouble of faking a valid PGP sig -- making my
_actual_ emails very easy to spot.

Anyways, back to the question in point -- Is this better?
Regards,
-- 
Stuart Longland (a.k.a Redhatter)            .'''.
Gentoo Linux/MIPS Cobalt and Docs Developer  '.'` :
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   .'.'
http://dev.gentoo.org/~redhatter             :.'
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