The 4-line rule is still being invoked all the time, and written into
college netiquette guides for students, things like that. The standard
has never been "effectively dead" except in the sense that it always has
been: clueless AOLers ignore it, clueful netiquette followers follow
it.
Read item #15:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~js/gnksa/gnksa.txt
> Despite the demise of the 4-line standard, I have a pretty definite
> impression that the average size of sigs actually dropped in the 1990s.
> The main thing that formerly inflated a lot of them was the need to
> list multiple bang-path addresses and other forms of contact info.
> Reliable @-addressing pretty much eliminated that pressure.
>
> Even back in its day this "rule" was frequently abused as a socially
> acceptable way to attack people whose opinions or style one disliked.
frequently abused, yes. socially acceptable? doubtful.
-- Jeff Garzik | Game called on account of naked chick Building 1024 | MandrakeSoft | - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/