Joe Clark <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> I would take issue with the statement that the "-- " demarcation for
>> signature blocks is widely used. A review of the archives of this list
>
>which beats the hell out of zero, which is what Listserv currently
>assumes, judging two messages with identical content but different
>.sigs as different.

I'd like to see the count of non-standard sigs in a sample of
(say) 1000 from a newsgroup mainly populated by netiquette savvy
old-hands before accepting that it ("-- ") is not widely used.

Interesting that (according to Pete) LISTSERV stops processing
commands when it hits a sig marker ("-- "), but ignores it when
checking for dupes.

But is this a significant problem, anywhere? How often do you see
identical messages with different sigs? This (non?)issue is creating
quite a stir, while the much more common problem of overquoting sank
with scarcely a ripple.

I'll pose it again: bouncing messages that contained the list's
bottom banner would catch the large majority of overquoters
because they are too lazy or too inconsiderate to trim _anything_.
Once they were forced to learn to trim the the banner, at least
some of them would go on to learn to trim other irrelevant parts.
Am I about the only one here that thinks this would be a very
useful feature?

-rex