[ Note that I am replying to this node after so long a delay because I had hoped that no reply would be necessary but recently received a request that I felt was best replied to here. ]

First, let me repeat that • was not a motivating factor behind this change. The main connection between this change and • was that • delayed this change. In the end, I decided to make this change despite it disabling • because I felt that • was considered obnoxious by many, including you.

I don't see any pallatable technical way to outlaw personalized reply indicators. I see a policy-only ban as being doomed to failure after a lot of time spent by editors and/or complaining and finger pointing. And I don't see a consensus supporting such a ban.

"Vanity tags" is a cute term for it, but (just to be clear) I don't include "(tye)" in the titles of my replies out of vanity. If that were the reason, then this thread would have started at "(tye) More HTML escaping". I've seen that a few people have stopped similar practices now that author information is reported in Search Results.

But making the author easier to determine was never even a big part of my motivation. I just find duplicate node titles to be a pain. And the easiest way for me to ensure that my replies have a unique title is to usually include "(tye)" because that is a short, simple string that I can be pretty sure will not be used in other node titles. Then I can just keep track of how many times I reply in a thread (w/o modifying the title for other reasons) and include a sequence number in replies other than the first one.

There are lots of cases where duplicate titles cause me problems. Recently I went back and added "(tye)" to (tye)Re: A question of style because I often refer to that node when questions about what difference & and () make when calling Perl subroutines. Depending on how I'm surfing, looking up the node ID for that item can be pretty easy or nearly impossible. But now I can link to it easily without having to memorize a node ID (I have a hard time remembering the node ID of tye and I actually end up using that quite a bit).

Now, I have other ideas of how to make node titles unique more often. For example, I kinda like the idea of prefixing reply titles with "Re2.1.3: " to indicate that this is the 3rd reply to the 1st reply to the 2nd reply to the root of this thread. It is a bit shorter than the current "Re: Re: Re: ". Or even "Re213: " with the "." only used around multi-digit parts. But I strongly suspect that such a change would be deemed "ulgy" by a great many of our members. After all, I've heard other proposals that I find pretty ugly. (: And even if we implemented a unique reply indicator, I'd probably still end up using "(tye)Re: " on at least some of my replies because I wouldn't want to have to remember whether my node was Re4: A question of style or Re6: A question of style.

Some related thoughts (and ones that I've mostly just repeated or refined above) can be found in (tye)Re: Dingbats in node titles: What's your opinion.

I'm not sure why you've continued this "protest" as long as you have. I haven't seen anyone express any support for your idea of banning all personalized reply indicators. Sure, I've seen people support the idea of banning "dingbat characters" in node titles and I've seen people express a dislike for "(tye)" in node titles. But noone saying we should try to ban them. Perhaps you have received support in private?

I would think that such a strong lack of public displays of support for your proposal would lead you to abandon your protest aimed at getting such a ban imposed. I think Macphisto was accurate in calling this "tilting at windmills". I don't foresee such a ban ever happening (because I don't see any practical way to implement it, even if there were support for it) and so I don't feel bad about having forced you to change your method of (futile) protest. Feel free to switch to · or stay with • if you wish to continue your protest.

I just find duplicate node titles to be a pain.

And that's why [id://nnnn] was invented. Use it. Stop tagging your articles. Tell others to stop tagging theirs, now that we have both authors in search results and unique-ID'ed references. And I'll stop tagging mine.

But you have to make it "a request from the gods", or it won't be followed, knowing how things get done around here.

But don't break my style of tagging just because it's different. That's what I object to: I seem to be being singled out, while others continue to be permitted to tag without hesitation. Unfair.

Would you rather I tag each of my responses with (PLEASE STOP VANITY TAGGING)? I might just start doing that to get the point across. Tagging was useful a year ago. It's persisted only because nobody realizes why it started. Let's stop it now!

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

Perhaps there are better places for your relatively civil disobedience? Perhaps on your homenode? Perhaps a button to msg tye that people can click( ONCE ) to send tye a /msg that they agree with you. Perhaps you could start a node and discuss it intelligently with those who agree or disagree with you. That way we have an ongoing record of the thoughts and feelings expressed.

Perhaps it's time to see that by simply annoying the gods they'll just swat at you instead of listening to you. I can't really think of too many situations where an adult got what they wanted by simply annoying those in charge.

--Mac.

p.s. Yes I --'d you for making petty threats.


Everyone has their demons...you just happen to be mine.

I rarely tag my nodes but I don't see how they're useless or annoying. They help avoid title collisions and can clear up RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE: replies.

While I try and read most nodes, if I'm short on time, I use it as a criteria for which nodes to read. There are many monks here who's postings are almost always worth a read, even on banal topics. (you are one of them.)

No one would complain if you would used (merlyn) in your titles. Using a bullet doesn't strike me as a protest but just a gimmick to standing out. When everyone tries to stand out, all you get is line noise.

If you have hard feelings about it, write a meditation. I think you'll see that most monks don't really mind (user_name) at all. This is really a silly thing that seems to be taking up too much time here.

My two cents.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

Recently I went back and added "(tye)" to (tye)Re: A question of style because I often refer to that node when questions about what difference & and () make when calling Perl subroutines. [..] now I can link to it easily without having to memorize a node ID (I have a hard time remembering the node ID of tye and I actually end up using that quite a bit).

I have a few of those also - scant, and not referred to quite as often, but the point stands. I would go so far as to say that such nodes deserve an edited, unique title that identifies them by content, rather than author. As far as looking them up is concerned, I found the Personal Nodelet a good place for the really frequently used ones, while the homenode does a sufficient job for the occasionally useful ones. As an admittedly more clunky alternative, one might also refer people to people a <a name="faqchest">'ed section on one's homenode rather than directly to the node in question (and who knows, they might linger and read the other interesting nodes as well).

I'm not going to start a crusade against vanity tagging, since although I do occasionally find it annoying, I don't feel it isn't enough so to warrant more than a silent protest by cleaning others' tags from the subjects of my posts. My point is that I do agree with merlyn in that I don't see how tags offer anything that cannot be achieved otherwise with no more or very little more effort.

For the record, Re(1.2.1.3.1) style subjects would certainly be less ugly than Re: •Re: (tye)Re: (FoxUni)Re: Re: foo bar.

Makeshifts last the longest.

Sometimes I chat via my WAP cell phone. In such cases, even having the node ID in my personal nodelet is not of much use. In fact, last night this very subject came up and I linked to (tye)Re: A question of style. And, as I've said repeatedly, this is only one example of a place where duplicate node titles would cause me problems. There are lots of times I've been glad that I or someone else has personalized their reply indicator, but I rarely try to memorize those cases when I run into them so I don't have a big list of them handy. I can understand you not seeing the use in them. That is fine. I see many uses and so will continue to use them.

As for retitling that node... A few have suggested that I make a tutorial out of that node of mine. I might do that some day, but I don't feel that just copying the node to tutorials is appropriate. It needs some work to become worthy of being a tutorial, to my mind. And at different times there are different nodes that I know the titles of but don't know the node IDs of that I sometimes wish to link to when it isn't convenient to look up the node ID. Sometimes I've bothered to note the node ID someplace, but often the node is not something that I expected I'd want to refer back to. So retitling often wouldn't work. Also, I'm not interested in retitling that node now. For one thing, I've now linked to it a few times from nodes via the title. For another, I think it fits into that thread nicely with the title it has.

And I don't consider stripping my "(tye)" (and possible digits) from the title when you reply to one of my replies any kind of protest. I prefer it that way. I dislike the practice of taking the time to adjust the title but not bothering to remove previous personalizations. You see, it isn't a vanity thing; I don't expect or even want you to preserve my indicator and I'm surprised when I see people hint at that (like it is my indicator and they don't feel they have the right to mess with it -- which is true when it is in the title of my reply, I suppose, but not otherwise). I certainly don't mind people just letting the default "Re: $previous_title" stand. But if you want to adjust the title, I would prefer that you also trim the previous extra bits out. So you'll never see a title like your example ("Re: •Re: (tye)Re: (FoxUni)Re: Re: foo bar.") because I'd have stripped the "(FoxUni)Re: Re: " part out. ;) Not that I have plans or even desires to ban or force any of these things.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")