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FAQ - Is your Sig killing your messages? -

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Chris Gunn

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Nov 10, 2010, 11:28:12 AM11/10/10
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If you use a five or six line sig and post lots of on-line messages, you
may find your messages are getting cancelled by the Anti-Spam Robots that
monitor the newsgroups.

The Anti-Spam Robots do not have any hard and fast rules about Signatures
(sigs), other than Usenet nettiquette. Up to 4 lines is considered polite,
over 6 is getting excessive. However, the robots cannot tell if your short
sentence is important or not. What they will see is you are repeating
yourself 80% of the time. By definition, that makes it spam.

Typically, it is considered bad manners to put more than four lines of
information in your Signature, regardless of what those four lines might
say or contain. Gigantic ASCII pictures of dragons, for example, are
annoying when you have to see them every time a person posts. It is
considered very bad manners to put an advertisement in your "sig" and then
post a lot of empty or nearly-empty messages simply to get your ad into
various newsgroups.

Advertising with "sigs" is a time-honored way to do things. It is the
recommended way - as long as you are *participating* in the discussion, and
not just posting to get the "sig" seen. In fact, it's probably the ONLY
nettiquette friendly way on the discussion newsgroups to advertise.

A Signature (sig) file is a small file that is automatically appended to
(stuck at the end of) any newsgroup messages you post -- regardless of the
content. Whether or not you can create and use a "sig" depends on
what sort of Mail Reader you're using.

Some suggestions:

Keep your sig at four lines or less. The Anti-Spam Robots don't care
what it says but folks reading your messages do.

Do not use an automated sig process you cannot edit before sending
your messages. If your News Reader hides it from you, turn the
option off and use the "Import Text" option or a macro key so you
can truncate it for short messages.

Keep Signature advertising extremely short and sweet. Let your
Web page contain the sales pitch. Your sig should usually be little
more than your URL and perhaps what sort of business you're in.

If you've only got a few words to say, make it a habit to shorten
your sig.

Restraint and responsibility are everything. If you've got those, people
will listen to you."

Thanks, Chris

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