to newcomers: please try to solve the problem yourself before asking

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Bob Holtzman wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>
>> p.s.  i might also point out that, for someone who presumes to lecture
>> others on mailing list etiquette, raymond has an annoying habit of
>> appending overly-verbose sigs to some of his posts, reminding everyone
>> of his fondness for firearms, as you can see here:
>>
>> http://lwn.net/2002/0221/a/the-beginning.php3
>
> Your objection to ESR's sig is length or content?

since i feel like waxing philosophical at the moment, let me reproduce 
the sig in question so people know what i'm talking about:

================
If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation
should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of
criminal acts reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so
after a century and a half of trying -- that they must sweep under the
rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the
northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both
Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 -- establishes the repeated,
complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.
         -- Senator Orrin Hatch, in a 1982 Senate Report
================

   first, by the standard rules of sig, it's too long -- the normal 
rule is 4 lines, no more.  that's generally enough to say what you 
want to say, and give out whatever personal or professional info you 
want to share.

   as to content, in my personal opinion, a sig like that turns a 
technical posting into spam, plain and simple.  think about it. 
let's say you received an email with nothing *but* that sig as 
content.  clearly, the sender wanted to share his views on gun control 
and, just as clearly, the message would be spam.  *no* *one* would 
disagree with that, and you would be justified in being annoyed at 
having received it.

   so how does attaching it to a technical mailing list posting 
suddenly make it acceptable?  at that point, it simply becomes spam 
with some techie stuff attached to justify it, and it's just as much 
spam as before.

rday