WILHOIT-L Archives

From: List Manager <>
Subject: [WILHOIT] Signature Lines on Email Posted to Mailing Lists (DON'T DO IT!)
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 19:46:55 -0500

Just thought I would post a reminder to all subscribers of Lists I
manage about automatic "Signature Lines" at the end of List posts.

Here are things NOT allowed in Signature Lines:

1) Endless strings of surnames, permanently attached to and included as
part of
your signature line are inappropriate and are not to be included in
messages
sent to Mailing Lists, Message Boards, or anywhere else where you leave
posts.

2) Other extraneous information, permanently attached to and included
as part of
your signature line, such as personal snail mail addresses; home or
office
phone or fax numbers; URLs associated with your website; your home page
URL; your
personal or office email address; your ICQ #; your family tree URL;
URLs for all
your surnames; "cutesy" sayings or quotes and biblical references or
quotes,
etc in an ad infinitum string, are inappropriate and are not to be
included in
your messages sent to Mailing Lists, Message Boards, or anywhere where
you leave posts.

Remember, I'm talking about *endless* strings of the above mentioned
items
attached to you signature line on a permanent basis, not the occasional
piece of
information of this nature that you may feel the need to send along
with your
message to the list; however, SURNAME lists in Signature Lines are
NEVER
appropriate.

Let me explain the last sentence above.

When you go to Rootsweb or Ancestry and do a search, let's say for DOE,
and a poster has included a Signature Line that contains that surname,
you
will get a hit for posts by that poster, regardless of where he/she
posted
the message. It may have been in GEN-MAT (a List for advertising
genealogy
related materials for sale), VIRUS-DISCUSSION, COMPUTERS, EUDORA-
WIN, FTM, etc., etc. When you do a search for a surname, you DON'T
want to see all the non-genealogy Lists where posters put surnames in a
Signature File at the end of all posts.

REMEMBER, Rootsweb's rules are that ANY Signature Line must NOT
exceed 4 lines, no matter what's in it.

Further, I would suggest you not put your phone numbers, mailing
addresses, ICQ Numbers, etc., in Signature Files. Dangerous!

Regards,
SgtGeorge
George W. Durman
List Manager

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