From: Bob Hutchison <hutch@...>
Date: 2001-12-05T22:31:41+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:27546] Re: New RubyGarden Poll - this one affects	us all :)

Hi everyone,

There appears to be an assumption that needs to be corrected. Not everyone
is using procmail. This solution that is so easy in some environments is
apparently near impossible in others. Yes I could change my mail reader to
read the ruby posts but it would be *very* inconvenient. And to suggest
using the newsgroup instead is also unreasonable (news of get-rich-quick
schemes and new porn sites isn't why I read this list).

The problem with the subject lines the way they are is illustrated by what
has happened since Michael's message was sent. Between 5:38PM and 7:12AM
there have been about 57 messages to the ruby list. Not bad! In my mail
reader I am forced to read these in order of posting not by subject. I
cannot, for example, easily determine if someone else has posted a message
saying what I'm saying right now. I cannot scan *past* messages either. Yes,
I can do a search for the subject line and get a list of everything that
contains that subject, but that isn't something that can be done quickly. I
also cannot mark threads that I've posted to and ensure that I respond to
people who take the time to respond to me (I *don't like* appearing rude). I
also cannot ignore threads that don't interest me.

All these are becoming more important as the volume of postings increase --
this is a nice little situation we find ourselves: the very increase in
information content posted to the list diminishes our ability to use it
effectively, reducing the effective information content. Not only is this
inconvenient, it is frustrating. At some point there will be no reason to
read the list.

I'll say it again: these numbers are *really* inconvenient and frustrating
to some of the ruby community.

Let me point out the obvious: everyone who strips these numbers knows that
they are inconvenient or they wouldn't strip them.

I've subscribed to a large number of mail lists over the years. The only
mailing list that I've encountered that both allows replies to posts and
inserts the posting number into the subject line is ruby-talk.

I think the ruby-garden poll, while fun, perhaps, is missing the point. Does
anyone routinely *use* the message numbers that cannot use headers (if you
are using procmail you can easily put them back, right :-)? Is *anyone*
going to miss them? Is there actually something useful to be done with these
that could mitigate the inconvenience?

Cheers,
Bob

On 01/12/04 5:38 PM, "Michael Neumann" <neumann@s-direktnet.de> wrote:

> Darrin Thompson wrote:
>> Paul Brannan wrote:
>> 
>>> If they don't make the change, then users that have a problem can (with
>>> a little bit of effort) add a filter to make the change.  Here's the
>>> filter I'm playing with (please let me know if it causes any problems
>>> with replying to the ML):
>>> 
>>> :0hf:
>>> * ^Subject: *\[ruby-talk:[0-9]*\]
>>> | perl -n -e -p 's/^Subject:\s*(\[ruby-talk:\d+\])\s *(.*)/Subject:
>>> \2\nX-Ruby-Talk-ID: \1/i'
>>> 
>> I have a "problem". What exactly is this "little bit of effort" with
>> which I can make these evil digits disappear?
> 
> Put the code above in your .procmailrc if you have procmail installed.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Michael