kemp@noscvax.UUCP (Stephen P. Kemp) (10/30/84)
I am posting this for your comments.
A couple of years ago when I first was exposed to the wonders of USENET,
one of MY biggest problems was not knowing WHO the players were. To me,
USENET was a morass of articles flying around with hundreds of peoples'
names attached. Responses were sometimes even contradictory!
These days I have a better idea of who's who, but I can sympathize
with the poor schnook who would ignorantly flame rabidly at Mark Horton or
Guy Harris....
I propose a VOLUNTEER standard for all of us to identify ourselves (or at
least to give some idea of where we're coming from) to other USENET readers.
An identifying "code" ought to be (in my view) SIMPLE and reasonably SHORT.
Below is a proposed method of codifying ourselves. The final code (USECODE?)
will fit on one line (maybe the LAST line?) and could be included as part of
the body of a posted article. One clear advantage of this is that it could
help each of us avoid problems like responding to 4.2bsd questions with
SYSTEM V answers or mailing expert level answers to rank novices.
The fields (colon-separated fields, comma-separated sub-fields):
==============================================================================
__ first year (ever) of using a computer (i.e. 44,62,84...)
__ first year you signed on to a UNIX system
__ first year you read USENET news
__ number of computer languages you are conversant with(0-99)
_ are you mainly a computer programmer or systems designer?(y or n)
_ are you mainly a computer user?(y or n)
___________ Version of UNIX you usually use (i.e. 4.2bsd, System V, etc.)
------.... A variable length field for you to describe your main field(s)
of endeavor (use this for a string of comma-separated keywords
of your choice)
==============================================================================
So, my code would be:
66:82:83:4:y:y:4.2bsd:computer,newsletter,editor,fortran,cobol,basic,kaypro,cpm
(I posted to net.general because that seems the most appropriate group.
Unfortunately, judging from recent articles, many people who make the best
comments have unsubscribed from net.general.)
Steve Kemp {ihnp4, decvax, akgua, dcdwest, ucbvax}!sdcsvax!noscvax!kemp
Computer Sciences Corp. kemp@nosc.ARPA
Naval Ocean Systems Center
San Diego, CA