[darcs-users] Re: [OT] benefits of automatic patch attribution (was: Re: Colin Walters...)

[Samuel Tardieu]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Stosberg
>>>>> <mark at summersault.com> writes:

Mark> The <aol> tag is a new one for me.

It's a way of saying « I know this part is useless as I just say I
agree with the previous contribution, but I want to make it anyway ».
Using it means it that you want to say that anyway, because you deem
it important.

It comes from September 1993: this month, AOL gave access Usenet news
to their customers. This was the first general public access to Usenet
news. As a consequence, this tool used mostly by computer scientist
who understood the rules was flooded by novices who didn't know the
netiquette. Threads started looking like:

  This is interesting
    -> me too
       -> me too
         -> me too
          -> me too

The signal/noise ratio dropped close to 0.

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam at rfc1149.net -- http://www.rfc1149.net/sam