From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2001-12-29T03:15:00+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:29560] Re: New Rubygarden poll

"Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> writes:

> At any rate, I would like to see the message number remain easily
> accessible. If it has to be moved, I would favor the end of the
> subject line or the first line of the body.
> 
> As for a header: Well, you may flame me, hate me, or denigrate me,
> but my most commonly used email client is Outlook Express.

From what I understand, as an Outlook user you currently don't get
proper threading of mailing list messages. With the numbers removed,
threading should start working. So you have a tradeoff between the
convenience of threading and the convenience of being able to see a
message number quickly.

You usage patterns are probably different to mine, but I _rely_ on
threading when reading the ML: the group would be hard to manage
without it. However, I very rarely use the message numbers (perhaps
once a week). So, if I understand the Outlook experience correctly,
moving the numbers from the start of the subject would greatly benefit
me if I were an Outlook user.

So, when _do_ I use a message number? Normally when pointing someone
to an old message that I found by searching the archives. In those
cases, the message number is obvious anyway: blade displays it all
over the place.

So I'm wondering: do we _really_ need to have the message number
anywhere in the subject line or in the message body? Is overcoming the
inconvenience of clicking a couple of times in Outlook to find the
header line really worth the ugliness of the extra graffiti?


Dave