From: Karl von Laudermann Date: 2007-05-23T22:49:55+09:00 Subject: Re: Netiquette (was Re: ruby libnet) On May 22, 8:15 am, James Edward Gray II wrote: > On May 22, 2007, at 3:35 AM, anansi wrote: > > This signature is around 20 lines and you really should try to keep > them under 4. This means that one of your messages probably contains > as much fluff as actual content. > > The real issue is that you waist the bandwidth of thousands of > readers every time you send a message to this list. That's just bad > manners. Actually, a linefeed character doesn't use up any more bandwidth than any other character. Thus, the whole "more than 4 lines = wasted bandwidth" idea is rather arbitrary. A 300-character signature wastes no more bandwidth if 20 of those characters are linefeeds than if only 3 of them are. If he simply deletes most of the space characters that are being used to center the spider, thus shifting the spider over to the left edge, his signature would be using fewer characters than a signature consisting of 4 full 80-character lines. Also, I note that you felt the need to quote the entire "waste of bandwidth" in your reply. :-)