PGP Key Signing Party .. Sign my key, Damn it.

[TheCotMan]

I'll skip commenting on the rest, but will address this one point:

[snip]Your ultimatum implies that your posts never require clarification and are not open for discussion.[snip]]

Naw. The purpose of the claim in no longer wishing to discuss something if it is mentioned multiple times, is a result of having been around on USENET before "GET YOUR GREENCARD" and the following spam blitzes.

The ultimatum is born from experience in threads where I have dealt with trollers. (I am not suggesting you are a troller here.) From this experience, I created an internal set of rules that i try to apply when posting comments on mailing lists, USENET (before the spam), and forums like this. Repetition of content is one of those things. I'll try to state something a few different ways, but if the statement is not received (does not need agreement) then I consider that specific discussion closed to me. It helps prevent me from getting too involved with emotion on any specific topic, and lets me focus my energy on things that are more productive.

I have other rules which cover people who ask questions which are in FAQ, but that is even more OT.

Getting back to topic, I will probably participate in a keysigning party at DC, and I will include a new ID and key in this thread some time before DC.

[yebyen]

I'm coming, but my flight gets in at 14:00 saturday, so we'll see if I make it to the keysigning party. Sign my key anyway!

NB: Keys can have more than one userid, and you can sign a specific userid rather than the whole key. This makes it convenient to have a key with more than one identity (say one is your real name and another is your online alias). With all of my fiddling with GPG, this was the one fact which was least obvious to me. I actually created three separate keys and signed them all with eachother before I realized the simpler solution :(

Anyway, this is helpful. Personally, I wouldn't sign a userid with a real name attached to it unless I had a personal relationship or had verified photo ID. I would be more than happy to sign an obvious "screen name" or online alias based on much less, for example I signed Dark Tangent's key based on comparing the fingerprints from several googlings. I guess this is why it is helpful to include the fingerprint in most messages :)