[ausastronomer (John Bambury)]

Originally posted by ving
I took a geek test... does that count?
as for using "callsigns" i can see where you re coming from as its nice to know the name of the person you are replying to.... but at the same time there are soooo many davids in the world that it would become confusing. If I was to put my user name as david right now it would say there is already one. I'd hae to put a number after it. "David68" at your service.
but yeah, these nicknames do depersonalise things a touch.

is that on the fence enough?

yours faithfully
"queen of the universe"

David,

Not saying do away with the handles/logins in any way, I can appreciate that they are necessary for identification purposes. What I am saying is leave everything as it is just make it a requirement to sign off the end of your post with your Christian name rather than your handle "as I currently do" and always have done, that is all. This is a fairly standard thing on several very large astronomy forums.

CS-John B