X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f996b,42b7c80602bdbea6 X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-04-22 04:00:38 PST Path: gmd.de!nntp.gmd.de!newsserver.jvnc.net!news.cac.psu.edu!news.pop.psu.edu!psuvax1!psuvax1!flee From: flee@cse.psu.edu (Felix Lee) Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art Subject: Re: .Signature files Date: 22 Apr 1994 11:00:38 GMT Organization: Penn State Comp Sci & Eng Lines: 23 Message-ID: References: <2p7grm$hg9@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: dictionopolis.cse.psu.edu Glenn W. Bernasek: >Isn't it amazing? Ascii art files can be greater than 180 lines, >and some articles seem to be as long as the "Great American Novel". >And yet there is quibbling over .sigs that are over 4 lines long! >Am I missing something here? I don't really see the difference >between an ascii text article or drawing and an ascii text .sig. Well, if you pop over to alt.fan.warlord, you'll find random social arguments against long signatures :) But besides that, cost really is a factor. About 50000 articles are posted every day, totalling about 115M of data. The average article size is a little over 2K. An average screen-sized ascii art-thing is about 1K. (Closer to 2K if it has a full-width border.) If everyone were to suddenly add a screen-sized ascii art-thing to their signature, news volume would suddenly increase by 50M a day. My news server would only be able to keep 2 days of news, instead of 4 days. This is the main reason why people encourage short signatures and trimming down quoted text. --