From: talstra@idca.tds.philips.nl (louw talstra)
Newsgroups: misc.misc,misc.wanted,misc.writing,news.admin.misc,news.admin
Subject: Re: Add where you are to .sig file
Date: 5 Jan 93 13:36:57 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Enterprise bv, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands.

In article <ELIZ.93Jan4175325@corpus-callosum.ai.mit.edu> eliz@ai.mit.edu (Elizabeth Willey) writes:
> >Craig Silver writes:
> >   ...I think it would be appropriate and convenient to the readers of your
> >   articles to put your city, province/state, and country of residence
> >   at the end of your articles or in your signature file.
 
> Why?
> What does this have to do with the reader's interpretation of the
> content of the posting?
> What does the location of the author be relevant?
Two points: 1)  habits, procedures, rules, laws, culture is *not* everywhere
in this world equal to what is usual in the USA. That may affect the reader's 
understanding/interpretation. Knowing the author's location may be helpful in
understanding a posting.
2) you may not be aware of it all, but, *not* for everybody in this world is
English (or American English) the native language, but "only" :-) a second
language.
This works both ways:
Reading: for "English-is-a-second-language"-people the usage and (hidden)
meaning of various specific expressions and, even more, "slang" is often
totally unknown and may be a cause of misunderstanding for the non-USA reader
(which may have an impact on his reaction.... etc.)
Writing: a non-American author can only write in school-taught English which
tends to be "static" (compared to "living" English in the USA/UK etc.), it may
sound somewhat old-fashioned and is often not error-free.
Did *you* ever try to write a reaction to some article in a *second* language?
[supposing you are familiar with one :-) ]  If not, try it, it might give you a
complete new view on postings which show some level of cultural myopia.....

> Why are the "From:" or "Reply-to:" net addresses, which give
> considerable information about the posting location, insufficient?
Because not all people reading postings are living in the USA......
In the case of your posting there are the addresses ai.mit.edu and
athena.mit.edu. Well, "athena" reminds me of the capital of Greece (I'm in
Europe after all) and it takes some time to relate "mit" to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (hope it's correct :-).  See what I mean?  And you
probably needed some time to find out about my location when reading my
mail-address.
You are on an *international* network, which is often highly dominated by
Americans who consider it their private playground, but there *are* some other
(= non-American) people as well.
Your reaction seemed a little bit egocentric and short-sighted to me. :-)

> If one desperately needs to know another's physical location, cannot one
> ask politely in private correspondence?
Sure, but knowing about the location may add to understanding the original
posting, or prevent misunderstanding if you wish.

I'm in favor of mr. Silver's recommendation, for the time being I'll use
default_location=USA  when reading a posting. :-)
Please excuse the errors in my English.
Groeten uit Nederland.

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#  Louw F Talstra, Digital Equipment Corporation, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands  #
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--
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#  Louw F Talstra, Digital Equipment Corporation, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands  #
#   internet: talstra@idca.tds.philips.nl               voice: +31 55 432099  #
#   uucp:  ...{uunet,mcsun,hp4nl}!philapd!talstra  #