It allows Randal to keep track of any reply in one of his threads. Instead of putting "(merlyn)", he puts a dot. Much shorter, and far more noticeable.

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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a (from-home) job
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;