What about the dozen posters that then adopt “Regards, Screenname” after your ruling, just to razz Shodan? They haven’t announced that they mean anything other than what they wrote, but their intent could be understood to be “Fuck Shodan”. You gonna put “Regards” on the banned words list for everybody, then?
As I’ve posted before, I mod elsewhere on the net. Have for a decade. I’m not seeing a workable rule-related solution here.
How about a general “Knock it off,” then?
I’ve also modded elsewhere–we’d just explain up to a point, and then we’d start booting people off the site. You know, the “don’t be a jerk” rule that holds the cyber-universe together?
The sig doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I used to sign my posts with my real first name, but it seems that even that irritates some people. I say do it if you want to and don’t worry about people liking it or not.
Yes, the more I think of it, all this could be resolved by a few judicious "Knock it off"s. You wouldn’t even have to say what you meant by “it.”
Christian Szell: Knock it off…Knock it off.
Babe: You’re talking to me?
Christian Szell: Knock it off.
Babe: Knock what off?
Christian Szell: Knock it off.
Babe: I don’t know what you mean. I can’t knock it off, unless I know specifically what you’re talking about.
Christian Szell: Knock it off.
Babe: Tell me what the “it” refers to.
Christian Szell: Knock it off.
Babe: Yes, okay. I’ll knock it off right now, so fast you wouldn’t believe it.
Christian Szell: Knock it off.
Babe: No. I won’t. Never. Ever! So be careful.
I don’t really see the point of it, but since you like it and it’s “legal,” I don’t see any reason to stop, either. I’ve gotten used to seeing it in all of your posts, and up until the time it was brought up in the Pit, I never gave it much thought.
I don’t often read/post in the same threads Shodan frequents, so I don’t see his signoff often enough to get truly annoyed by it, and didn’t realize it was even an issue until recently. However, those times when I have noticed the signoff, I have to confess I found it … distracting.
One problem, as I see it, is that “regards” is simply the wrong word to use in the context of a message board. It’s a word that, unlike “sincerely”, is utterly meaningless on its own. Where “sincerely” is an adverb that abbreviates the thought, “I meant the above words sincerely”, “regards” is also an abbreviation, but it’s abbreviating a statement in which it is used as a noun. I’ve seen letters written in the days before the telephone, when letters often took weeks to arrive, and it was fairly common when writing to a distant relative, friend, or colleague to wrap up a letter with something like:
"Please give my regards to [insert list of names of other relatives, friends, and colleagues] and express my sincere hopes to see all of them again soon, blah blah blah.
Yours,
Mister Rik"
It was, I think, a way to suggest that the letter’s recipient share the news related in the letter with the others, in order to keep everybody informed on what the writer has been up to without the need for the writer to compose (in longhand) a large number of letters to every individual person, some of whom perhaps couldn’t read anyway. It’s an ancient practice — most of Paul’s epistles in the New Testament of the Bible end this way. This was common enough in letter-writing that eventually it was shortened to simply “Regards”, and people generally understood what it meant. The letter writer was not giving his regards to the letter’s recipient — he was already showing his regard for the recipient simply by taking the time to write. Rather, he was asking the recipient to perform the personal favor of letting others know that the writer is thinking of them.
So “regards” is an appropriate signoff for a letter to one’s intimates. It wasn’t something you’d use when writing, as a customer, to the president of a company — who are you going to ask him to give your regards to? You don’t personally know the company president, his family, or his associates, and they don’t know (or likely care) who you are. In the same way, members of the SDMB are not Shodan’s intimates. We’re a bunch of anonymous mooks. I highly doubt that many of us spend our time away from the SDMB thinking to ourselves, “I wonder how life is treating Shodan lately?”, or that Shodan is truly desirous that I pass his regards on to my sister.
So “Regards, Shodan”, in the context of a message board, is about as meaningful as, “Ibuprofen, Shodan”, and about as appropriate as signing every message, “Love, Shodan”
It’s not the number of lines, it’s this:
The black line serves the same purpose as the “–” on a line preceding an e-mail signature: it’s a visual cue that the end of the message’s content has been reached. Without the visual cue, there’s a natural tendency for the reader’s eye to continue scanning until it runs out of text to scan. I’d get annoyed right quickly if, while going through my significant bulk of daily incoming e-mail, I found my eyes continuing past every message’s content to read the sender’s name, e-mail address, and link to their personal Web site.
I sign my business correspondence with
Regards,
My Name
But I think we have gone beyond the strict meaning of the term. Just as atheists say “Goodbye” without meaning “God be with you”. or “how are you” without necessarily wanting to know the state of your health.
It’s a social signal, somewhat arbitrary but no more so than most language symbols. On a related note, you can tell someone to 'get fucked" even though, taken seriously, it is more a wish that good things happen in the future than an insult.
I am mostly saying something like “my regards to you”. not necessarily to your family or friends.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan’s focus on this critical issue of whether he should sign off on all of his posts is starting to remind me of a 1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald short story - “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”.
This is the one in which a flapper who isn’t attracting the boys is advised to use a conversational gambit about whether she should get her hair bobbed (cut short). Apparently this was a racy thing to do in 1920. She gets a lot of attention out of it (of course there is a twist at the end).
“Shodan Signs Off On All His Posts” doesn’t have quite the same panache, though with some editing maybe an enterprising author could get it published on salon.com.
Anyone who is bothered by your little 2-word signoff needs to get a life. There are children starving in Africa.
Well, just two cent worth. It does make your post looks like a form letter…and I find it jarring when the post is not consistent with your signature. Since you are used to typing it manually, I suggest:
When you really mean it. And
and if the post is less than cordial…
Well, if he specifically means “fuck you” sometimes when he’s being less than cordial, what would “No Offense Meant” mean in that context?
Well, it’s quite funny (a “ha-ha funny”) if a letter begins by cursing and swearing at you and wishing a thousand centipedes to invade your nose and ears and then he signs off with “Best Regards” ?
I couldn’t give a bugger.
I agree with Antinor. I’ve conditioned myself long ago not to get too worked up by anything I see on a message board. If you want to keep putting it in your posts, Shodan, I don’t have a problem with you or anybody else doing so.
Yeah, and they don’t even have a message board to post to, much less a sig.
I only post because this is a poll, I mean no offense. Also, I didn’t read the rest of the thread, so I have no idea what others think about it.
Oddly, I find it vaguely annoying. I couldn’t begin to tell you why, but if I think about it, I do. I have no strong feeling towards Shodan - although I know the name, we have no history and I can’t say I can remember anything he has done that would make me hold a grudge. So why is it annoying to me? Beats the heck out of me. I can’t explain it, it just is. I’ll add though, that I find *anyone *who signs their posts annoying, not just Shodan.
Having said that, I just can’t be bothered to get upset about it. If you want to do it, I’m not going to start a pit thread -or likely join one - trashing you for it.
People got annoyed enough to say something about Shodan’s signoff? Sounds like they might have a problem with control issues. Or maybe it was just another way to pick at him.
Hubba Hubba, Zoe
Keep it, Shodan.
Really?
Dear Shodan,
Hope everything is going well with you and yours. Just thought I'd drop you a line concerning your opinion that the exchange of information here on the SDMB is more like correspondence than conversation, necessitating the need for your closing salutation at the end of every missive.
Considering the rapid-fire responses that frequently take place here, wouldn't you say that it is more like text messaging? When text messaging back and forth, one does not identify one's self each and every time, because one is *already* identified automatically at the start of each message, such as is the case here on the SDMB.
Hope to hear back from you soon concerning this matter.
With High Regards,
CzarcasmDespite my lengthy analysis a few posts ago, it really doesn’t bother me.
If you want an example of a signature that does irritate me, how about this one guy on an e-mail discussion list for musicians who like to play the music of Rush. In that case, it’s not the signature itself (simply a short phrase quoted from a Rush lyric), but the formatting. I suspect the guy simply doesn’t know how to properly set up his e-mail software’s signature feature, so what happens is that instead of a blank line or two after the last paragraph and then the sig quote, the sig quote gets appended to the last line of the paragraph like this “soaking up the cathode rays”
… and since the fellow is inconsistent with his use of punctuation and doesn’t capitalize the first word of the quote, it usually looks just like how I did it there — a continuation of his final sentence. Jarring, to say the least.