An Elfly Reminder

[Kelley]

> Random832:
> Irony, much? How "many years" has the HPfGU way worked? I 
> believe someone said it started in its present form after 
> the OOtP release, that's, what, 2003? Generally "many many 
> years" means more than three. As opposed to the standard 
> way, which has worked for literally _decades_.

Kelley:
Okay, hang on -- I was the one who said that, and I was 
specifically talking about *self-attribution* of comments.  
List members themselves began this practice and it caught 
on around that time.

Our rules about giving proper attribution for quoted comments, 
signing your posts, snipping extraneous quoted material, etc., 
have been in place from very early in our group's existence.  
No, not for decades, but why should that matter, really?  Do 
you think our group does not have the right to choose which 
conventions work best for us?

> Random832, who has yet to be given a satisfactory explanation 
> of how signing these things helps anyone, particularly given 
> the fact that my name's already present a mere five lines 
> above this signature.

Kelley:
In this case your name's present five lines above, however 
consider a post in which two different people are quoted, say 
maybe an 8 - 10 line paragraph from each, and then the person 
replying makes some rather lengthy comments.  This person has 
placed their name above their comments, but as their comments 
are quite long, a person using a screen reader may not remember 
the name by the time they reach the end. If the person's name 
is also at the end it both reminds them whose comments they were 
reading, plus lets them know they've reached the end of the post, 
as well.

--Kelley