Two hyphens and a space -- who still does this?

i do it to denote a long dash in ascii-style situations -- eg ILX -- but that's not what you mean.

i do remember this convention. i hated it, and spent ages trying to get PINE not to do it.

-- ILX. It's very important

Back years ago, people used to always append some sort of knobbish quote, that would 'say something' about themselves, to their emails.

--

"Ding dong the witch is dead"
sdfsd!sfdnm!Keith

i do it to denote a long dash in ascii-style situations -- eg ILX -- but that's not what you mean.

Uh exactly. I fear I may have caused confusion by actually doing this in the thread title...

Email signatures are so 1995.

There's no an option for "I do it on the rare occasions when I pretend to have a .sig but otherwise no."

True. Also lacks an option for "never cared about that shit". I suggest using option 2 for these cases; no 3 is meant mainly for "I've never even heard about this".

I still do it. Force of habit, work email needs a sig, etc.

I did it more because of Usenet than email though.

Back years ago, people used to always append some sort of knobbish quote, that would 'say something' about themselves, to their emails.

They still do this on just about every message board on the internet that is not ILX.

Indeed. And the old maximum-four-sig-lines conventions or similar are long dead. This is a typical example from the forum at wtaworld.com -- yep, they do running comments on tennis matches with these sigs attached; signal/noise -> 0. And all the emoticons are animated obv.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b356/olem/forumshit.jpg

Hahahahaha, I have NEVER seen anything that bad before, not even on video game and pro wrestling forums. Complete song lyrics? Whatever the hell that second one is supposed to be? Fucking hell.

> I have NEVER seen anything that bad before

not a big reader of the Dogs On Acid message board then. that's probably the worst example i know of, a club flyer with every two-word post.

"The world's largest drum and bass / jungle message board"

That would be no.

"pro wrestling forums"

8)

just that one for the Benoit thing

how do you start Polls ?

top of the page, click "More..."-->"New Poll"

ah, it seems to be missing from some stylesheets

actually just the last one

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Man, I haven't been on Usenet in forever. I wonder if it has changed at all.

I was just reading usenet netnews for the first time in ages because I was seeing what was on the private newsgroups for the university I work at. Not much for half a decade of unexpired posts. 2002-2005 is enough to while away an afternoon or two dipping in while waiting for other things, and then nothing.

Occasionally I still think "that is the kind of lyric I would add to my sig file, except it isn't 1998 any more."

People got very upset about how Outlook Express would eat the trailing space and then it wasn't a proper sig separator. I remember getting told off when testing Eudora (back when there weren't many Windows IMAP clients) because it did too. I'd assumed it was old enough to know better.

Related question: when did you give up on old quoting conventions and just type your new email at the top above the entire content of the previous person's email and possibly all the ones before too ("top-posting")? I resisted for a time but when an old newsgroup friend from years before emailed me I was half-surprised to see him do it and finally gave up on it myself. It's nice not sticking so closely to the original order, anyway, and it messes things up if one person's doing it and the other isn't.

...to answer the actual poll, used to, don't use sigs any more as they don't really seem appropriate on personal email these days. If I had to I might still just to show I'm aware of a dead convention, but that's all it is to me, so I might not bother.

I hated top-posting until Gmail came along. It hides all the stuff you've already read, so I just type at the top, unless I'm replying to a non-Gmail person or pulling out bits of the conversation to reply to.

I still use -- if I'm pretending to have a sig, at work.

A line of what?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I hated top-posting until Gmail came along. It hides all the stuff you've already read, so I just type at the top, unless I'm replying to a non-Gmail person or pulling out bits of the conversation to reply to

er, yes. i was about to go FUCK TOP-POSTING; NEVER! but then i realised that gmail means i do it all the time.

shit.

>>>>>>>>>>>yes it is
>>>>>>>>>>>>>nice not to have
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>everything looking like
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>this for no reason
>>>>>rude shit that was

One of the companies I work for has mandated a standardized signature for all email that has six lines of text and an embedded GIF. After a couple days of "hilarity ensues" I had to explain that most of the email probably wasn't going through because the recipient's spam filter might be blocking anything with an embedded GIF.

Man, I haven't been on Usenet in forever. I wonder if it has changed at all.

There's a few groups I participate in still (sci.space.history, rec.aviation.student, etc.) but usenet is still the best for generalized piracy.

I've always just deleted any automatic reply-quoting in email, I suppose because:

(1) it looks messy

(2) there is no reason an ongoing correspondence should take up exponentially more and more of your email space due to continually re-saving the same text that's appeared in every piece of mail so far

(3) it has this effect where people in offices suddenly think it's okay to send you email that says (e.g.) "can you take care of this," meaning you have to pick through the entire email exchange below like some kind of detective, in reverse, filtering out endless irrelevant bullshit and constructing some kind of timeline of communication, all to figure out that what they need you to do is something like "fax a copy to Kevin," which they could have typed clearly in two seconds

Thx for voets ppl!

there is no reason an ongoing correspondence should take up exponentially more and more of your email space due to continually re-saving the same text that's appeared in every piece of mail so far

Only quadratically surely?