From: jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Mistaken Identity
Date: 28 Jul 92 19:11:45 GMT
Followup-To: rec.org.sca
Organization: SCA

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.  By now, you should have received 
my lord's posting, indicating that we were answering the wrong Dafydd.  Two 
points come to mind.

The first has to do with our error.  I read this, and I thought, "That 
doesn't sound at _all_ like Dafydd, I wonder what the heck is going on," 
but it never occurred to me that it was a _different_ Dafydd.  We do have 
lots of people with the same first name.  Worth keeping in mind....

The second has to do with attributions and signatures.  This is the second
frou-frah in about a week that involved an absence of or mistaken attribution.
Two points.  First, those with sensitive ears, once they have a sense who you 
are, _do_ use that in reading what you wrote.  So it does help communication
to be clear in who we all are.  Second, I've always felt that if I say
something that generates heat, I should be the one to catch the heat, not
somebody else with a name superficially like mine.  Third, the actual content
of communications may vary depending on personal history.  I have no personal
history at all with the Dafydd who posted, but lots -- friendly -- with Dafydd 
ap Gwystl.  As it happened, within a couple of hours of the posting being
sent to the Rialto, Dafydd ap Gwystl had sent us email on the subject -- 
questioning to our position, but _very_ differently, and (as I would expect, 
with Taffy) very friendly and constructive in tone.  Which made me wonder 
what on earth had made him go nuts, and my lord wonder why on earth Taffy 
had suddenly taken it into his head to stab me in the back.

Well, of course, none of that happened.  An entirely different Dafydd posted
an opinion, to which he is well entitled, and which has none of these 
overtones because none of this history.

Boy, am I glad we found out about the mistake quickly.  Better, though,
had it not happened.

Relying on header lines or .sig files involves trusting mailers.  (Need I
say more?)

I like to use a short and simple personal signature, because I feel all stuffy
putting down long bits of name.  But I now realize that to make this safe,
it's a real good idea to open with an unambiguous (or within reason, likely
to be unambiguous) identification, in the first lines of the text of a
message.  Less likely to have people confused who I am, more likely to take
the heat from my own messages, less likely to send it inadvertantly to
someone else, more likely to help people follow by knowing whose voice to
identify with the words.....

To Dafydd ap Gwystl, my public apologies for thinking he could have posted
what I attributed to him on account of the signature.  I'm not saying that 
no one could have posted that honorably, but _his_ doing so would have been 
something rather different, and I should have known better, knowing him as
I do.

To the other Dafydd: please sign your correspondence more clearly.  I like
to know who I'm talking to.  This is especially acute, since Dafydd ap
Gwystl posts regularly, and you do not, so we all know a Taffy who isn't
you.

Thank you all.  We now return to your regularly scheduled Rialto.....

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry
(There are other Angharads, but I don't _think_ any of them are also Terry...)