Re: [Pan-users] OT: calling all old-timers -- using * for attributions

[Rob]

On Monday 02 November 2009 10:49 pm, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> I can't say I've ever seen this, but I've only been using Usenet for
> 15-odd years, so not an old-timer. Any old-timers ever seen this and
> like to comment?

I don't go back to the very beginning of Usenet (I didn't have a computer 
when I was 9), but I started using it before there were alt.* groups.  I 
would swear that even the rn program circa 1987 used either the "In article 
address@hidden, nnnn wrote:" or "On XXXX, YYYY wrote:" form of attribution.  
But you can poke around on groups.google.com and come up with plenty of 
evidence.  I went back and looked at a couple of my own posts from that 
era, and my quoting style wasn't consistent (sometimes I just indented the 
previous post, sometimes used greater-than symbols, sometimes had "YYYY 
wrote:", sometimes had nothing at all to indicate attribution) so I assume 
I was still doing it by hand.

Maybe the asterisk thing was a FidoNet or other BBS-oriented form of 
attribution, but I don't remember it.  I have used some tty-based chat 
programs (similar to IRC) that used an asterisk to indicate who was 
speaking, and maybe that's where the poster got confused.

Rob