djj (08/10/82)
I like people to sign articles for two reasons:
1) I am "blessed" with only a 300-baud line. Reading the full header
of an article got to be very tedious in a hurry. I then discovered
the "-h" option for news (THANK YOU, whoever thought of this!).
However, if an article is not signed, it is a distinct pain to
discover its sender. By including a (partial) path name in the
signature, I can then discern if the automatic answer function of
news will suffice, or if I should cook up a better path name
for any replies I choose to send.
2) Even if pathnames are not supplied, signing articles with human
monikers provides that little touch that makes me realize that
there are people behind each and everyone of these articles.
After a while, you can start to recognize the individual stylizations
of the various netters. Trying to guess the author is always
interesting. Further, if an author knows her/his stuff (and always
signs her/his articles), a mediocre effort on the part of that
author will be less likely to get jumped on because of the weight
of past successful performances.
Regards,
Dave Johnson
BTL - Piscataway
(...!mhux*!pyuxcc!djj)
ps -- did "her/his" bother anybody? Let's see a show of hands. Come on, it
bugged more of you than that. Is there a better way?
Striving for social change,
djj