self-promotion [was: 198.32.64.12 -- Harmless mis-route or

Joe Greco jgreco at ns.sol.net
Wed Sep 3 13:02:09 UTC 2008


> > [SNIP]
> > 
> > Just so that I am clear on your issue here: You believe it is "okay"  
> > for you to put your linkedin URL in your .sig, but Gadi must not be  
> > allowed to put it at the top of a post? 
> 
> Yes, I think that's exactly right.  It's a statement of what the sender
> perceives to be important about the email.  I read email for the
> content; having the URL at the top is an assertion by the poster that
> he thinks his resume is more important than what he says.  (Yes, I know
> some of you are about to hit reply to say "maybe it is from Gadi".
> Don't bother -- what he says is often quite valuable.)
> 
> 		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

Patrick, I would say that "we" have a long history of tolerating certain
content within a signature that might not be appropriate within a message
itself; my own opinion would be that inclusion of this sort of thing
outside of the signature is inappropriate, except perhaps where it would
fall within the scope of the purpose of the list.

Steve, it is intriguing that you would make such a statement, since you
clearly believe that your own signature is sufficiently worthwhile that
you do not separate it from the main message with a signature separator,
which would cause those of us who have clients configured to grey out or
eliminate signatures to ignore "less valuable" signature content.  I do
appreciate that your signature is refreshingly brief, however.  ;-)

Paul, who I believe originally complained about this, I would have agreed
with your complaint had it clearly been part of a pattern of behaviour on
Gadi's part.  However, a one-time inclusion of unacceptable text should
probably be overlooked.  There are very few of us who have /never/ made a
cut and paste error, failed to trim content, misattributed a message,
failed to attribute a message, or made any of a hundred other minor sins.
You wouldn't want a bunch of us to pile on you the next time you make a
speeling mysteak.  You might also want to make sure you put your LinkedIn
URL in your SIGNATURE, after a signature separator, because from where I
sit, your message closely resembles Gadi's, because you included a LI URL
in the BODY of your message.

Gadi, you do have an aura that surrounds you of vague self-promotion, and 
you seem to rub some people the wrong way.  You might want to consider 
not including an automatic signature if you don't intend to use it on a
majority of messages, because clearly there is a chance of operator error
when deleting the unintended text.

Joe, you obnoxious jerk, you include TWO signatures in your messages, one
"initials only" one before the signature separator, and a fully compliant
one after.  Pick one or the other!  ("But it helps clarify attributions,
etc!")  ;-)

There.  Now we have a mountain made out of a molehill!  Now back to our
regularly scheduled programming.  (*groan*)

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.




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