From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-09-05T07:40:27+09:00
Subject: Re: subject line

On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 09:48:00PM +0900, Peter Cooper wrote:
> I vote against. Those with the firehose of ruby-talk gushing into their
> singular inbox is probably an e-mail masochist and enjoys it :) That said,
> whatever the majority decides, although this all rather sounds like change
> for change's sake.

I have ruby-talk in my primary inbox basically because if I let it dump
into a separate "folder" I'll end up ignoring it.  "Oh, there's too much
there for me to deal with right now -- I'll get to it later."  Then, of
course, "later" never comes.  If I want to ignore ruby-talk, I'll just
unsubscribe again.

Judging by what I've seen here, the pattern for votes against something
like [RUBY-TALK], [RUBY], or even [RT] in the subject line boils down to
two things:

  1. Too many characters!  Oh noes!

  2. I do it this way to deal with that.  You should be able to do
  something like that, too, and if you can't you're using the wrong MUA.

I find the first at least logically valid, even if I find it difficult to
be sympathetic with the holocaust of lost characters.  The second, on the
other hand, seems quite without merit.  Different people find different
practices provide them with greater convenience and productivity.
Accusing people of masochism, stupidity, or luddite avoidance of what you
consider to be the "right" type of MUA is kind of a narrow, and even
offensive, approach to disagreeing.  It should probably be avoided.

The only argument against it that I've seen that might convince me is the
one that relates to forum and newsgroup gateways.  Too bad all that has
happened there is someone said it *might* be a problem, and nobody has
confirmed it.  Unless and until someone does so, I'll just consider it a
remote possibility, and generally ignore it as an attempt to obfuscate
the matter in hopes of derailing any attempts to add something like [RT]
to the subject line (or even [R], now that I think about it -- though
maybe that should be reserved for the R language, which makes me think
[RB] might be more appropriate to this list).

Now, to be a little less careful in tone:

I don't think I've ever seen this much wailing and moaning over a handful
of characters in a subject width in my life.  Considering the massive
benefits it would grant to those of us who find ourselves inconvenienced
by implementing a list-identifier in the subject line, I find it
exceedingly difficult to give a hot damn about a few characters.  If
you're worried about subject line length, get on the case of people who
post a damned paragraph for the subject line.  There's far too much of
that going on around here.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Marvin Minsky: "It's just incredible that a trillion-synapse computer could
actually spend Saturday afternoon watching a football game."