spaf@gatech.UUCP (11/27/83)
This discussion is held about every 6 months.
One thing I have learned, both from correspondence and from the results
of the Usenet survey I conducted a few months ago, many people prefer a
long signature on articles. This includes addresses on networks other
than the Usenet.
First of all, replies can be sometimes be optimized if the set of
possible paths is given. It also allows for alternative routing in
case of mailer problems (like sites which forward news but not mail).
Second of all, there are a number of local nets which connect to Usenet
through gateways and which have a special internal addressing format
(Purdue and Carnegie-Mellon are examples). There have been many times
I have wished to reply to a news article posted by someone at one of
these sites, but the only path I have is the one the news came along,
and mail gets dropped at the gateway. I really wish people at those
sites would include an address which is valid from "outside."
Also, some people ask why we include addresses which are for networks
outside of Usenet, such as CSNet or Arpanet. That is also fairly
simple. If I send a mail message via CSNet, I have a very high degree
of confidence that: 1) it will get there with 24-36 hours, often within
6 or less; 2) it will arrive intact; 3) I will be informed if it is not
deliverable and thus I don't have to have important messages' reception
acknowledged; 4) it is pretty secure and the mail is not going to be
sitting around in readable directories on machines along the path.
US Mail addresses are probably going a bit beyond the necessary, but if
the person involved has access only to the Usenet, then perhaps it is
justified.
I am getting a bit tired of signatures with smiley faces, dragons in
flight, diagrams of the poster's aunt's heart bypass surgery, and maps
of the poster's home town, however. Could we try to keep the incidence
of that down a bit, please?
Once again, it's:
--
Off the Wall of Gene Spafford
School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet: Spaf @ GATech ARPA: Spaf.GATech @ CSNet-Relay
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,rlgvax,sb1,unmvax,ulysses,ut-sally}!gatech!spaf5113dd@hound.UUCP (D.DONOHOE) (11/29/83)
Gene Spaf has hit the nail on the head with his comments about addresses. There has been a flurry of items from parsec!smu!leff that has neither name or address. SMU cannot be reached via parsec from my computor. Also the received path does not seem to work as I have sent several replies to SMU without receiving an answer. I always put a path that should work in my signature, although I am not sure it does. It would be useful for netnews to automatically indicate the network address that will work. Doug Donohoe houxi!hound!5113dd