On 10/22/2011 11:42 AM, Jules Richardson wrote:
I don't
know of any that don't allow this, and I don't know of any
other mailing lists which don't have that subject line tag. I've
suggested it a few times over the years but nobody seems interested.
Actually, I had that turned on for some time on the list, people
complained bitterly and asked me to remove it, so I did. I believe the
prevailing objection was that it made subject lines longer (scrolling
some of the more "important" part of the subject out of view on some
peoples mail clients), and in fact there were other ways to
identify/classify it, particularly source addresses, headers, etc.
I'm quite surprised to hear this. Have those guys just never seen any
other mailing lists? That is very much the norm, and has been for a
really long time.
I'm one of "those guys". It wasn't the norm when classiccmp first
started - I don't think it started to become common until the late 90s,
in that brief period before mail clients generally had useful filtering
abilities (or, indeed, the concept of different folders even)
Personally, I filter different lists according to header data - so
there's no need for subject-tagging and it just wastes up space
I do not share that opinion. ;) As I've said, I don't want subject
tagging for automatic sorting of email. That is absolutely the wrong
way to do it, and as such, I'd never dream of doing it that way. (you
know how anal I am! ;)
It is my personal preference to NOT have my inbound mail pre-sorted
into folders. I prefer to do it this way because, when trying it for
the first time many years ago (using the ELM mailer and procmail) I
found that I just never got around to checking those other folders. I
want all of my inbound mail in my main mail spool, and seeing "[cctalk]"
(for example) in there allows me to cruise through my new mail and
correctly frame each message in the right mental context.
I get a lot of personal mail with subject lines containing stuff like
"help with PDP-11", and I've found that I can just roll along replying
as if I were sending something to a list, and two paragraphs later
notice that it was actually a personal message that I may have replied
to differently for whatever reason.
And again, I get along just fine without it most of the time, it's
not something that I feel really strongly about, but I do prefer it that
way and it is (based on the other lists I'm on) pretty unusual not to
have it.
(I've
wondered if there's a way to set up Thunderbird so that it removes it
for the lists I'm on that *do* have it, but I've never got the tuits
together to look into it)
There's probably an extension, or at least there should be. That'd
be pretty handy. Such an extension would likely be able to be written
to *add* them as well, to suit user preference.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
New Kensington, PA