Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!super!grantham
From: grantham@super.ORG (Jon Grantham)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re:  L
Message-ID: <12689@super.ORG>
Date: 9 Aug 89 02:12:02 GMT
References: <488@sppy00.UUCP> <57028@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <1525@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Reply-To: grantham@super.UUCP (Jon Grantham)
Organization: Supercomputing Research Center
Lines: 28

In article <1525@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett)
writes:
>Inserting a Control-L into a news message is not a good thing to do.
Try telling that to the folks in rec.arts.movies.  The lack of insertion of
Control-L has been the cause of major flamage over there.  People get really,
really upset if you spoil the ending of Batman for them.  Or Citizen Kane.

>Some terminals and/or news readers do not pause when they see ^L
>In some cases - it might clear the screen or do something equally offensive.
You take the risk -- mess up a few people's screens, or get tons of hate mail
and flamed all over the newsgroup for revealing the suprise ending to "Bill and
Ted's Excellent Adventure."

>Instead - just insert a few blank lines if you want to delay the
>punchline to a joke.
But that won't really protect people from movie spoilers.

>Some news readers will pause before they see the character sequence
>preceeding a signature:
>-- 
But not all will.  And you'll make the people who don't have that feature
*really, really* mad at you.

If you choose to post spoilers without ^L, that's your prerogative.  But don't
say I didn't warn you.
-- 
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grantham@super.org	uunet!super!grantham	Jon_Grantham@ub.cc.umich.edu