Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:23:10 -0400
From: Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Avoiding legal email signatures
Message-ID: <20070610162309.GM23679@phlogiston.dyndns.org>
References: <200706092214.l59ME0i06348@momjian.us>
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On Sat, Jun 09, 2007 at 06:14:00PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> I know we have talked about how to avoid legal email signatures on this
> list.  One idea would be for a small percentage of our users to ignore
> emails with a legal signature.  I know I am less likely to reply to such
> an email.

The problem with that is that you ding people inside large
corporations that are _trying_ to adopt PostgreSQL in the face of
bad corporate policies (like "we standardise on product O" or "all
outbound email gets garbage L appended").  Moreover, people who are
in such environments are often prevented from visiting gmail,
hotmail, or the other likely suspects in order to send their messages
in circumvention of corporate policy.  And remember, such people may
not actually be able to prevent the signature going on by just
ignoring policy -- often, it's added at the gateway on the way out
of the server.

I know they're irritating and stupid, but in the context of a mailing
list they also have zero effect, because the mailing list address is
explicitly public.  I also know that they use extra space in the list
archive, but if we attempted to purge the list archives of every
worthless bit of nonsense in there, surely this wouldn't be the
number one thing on the list (the semi-annual eruption of knee-jerk
"threads are better" discussions probably take more room, for
example).

What we _could_ do, I suppose, is start mail-writing campaigns to
legal departments in companies that insist on such disclaimers,
pointing out the folly of their ways and asking that the policy be
changed to distinguish between list-posting and non-list-posting
accounts.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan  | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
The plural of anecdote is not data.
		--Roger Brinner