On 18 May 2003 20:36:06 -0400, The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com gave utterance to the following:
On Sun, 2003-05-18 at 14:43, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
I don't like the comma rule, because it can be easily (and inadvertantly) worked around. For example, what if someone wrote "in Massachusetts, USA." for the Boston article. Then the rule and subsequently software would consider it a full article.
No arbitrary automatic rule is perfect. If the rule was three periods, someone could write "in Massachusetts..." etc. They're all dumb rules, essentially equivalent.
Not to mention that a three sentence requirement only encourages people to add unresearched material which may well be wrong in order to fulfil the requirement. Or they may write short sentences. These sentences may not read well.