On Fri, 22 Jun 2018, Aris Merchant wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 11:06 AM Alex Smith <ais...@alumni.bham.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 2018-06-22 at 09:48 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> > > Historically we've aggressively avoided mandating format, but I for
> > > one have no problem mandating that for a Report to be a Report it must
> > > have an [Officer] tag as the first thing in the subject line (might also
> > > help with all those "is this really a report/'purporting' to be a
> > report?"
> > > questions). One reason we've avoided format mandates is because we
> > > don't want people to have to re-post reports several times to fix trivial
> > > formatting errors, but this pattern is so well-established I think
> > > errors would be infrequent.
> >
> > You'd need some way to handle deputisation (where the pattern has
> > historically been less rigid), but apart from that it makes sense.
> >
> > It would ideally be optimal to define a format that doesn't assume
> > email, but good wording can probably deal with that.
> >
> > --
> > ais523
> >
> I'd phrase this as a requirement to place it in a conspicuous location on
> the message, to maintain medium independence. Other than that, looks good.
That maintained flexibility would defeat the purpose in two ways:
- Manually, it was meant as a way for the Referee or ADoP to quickly
scan Subject Lines to see if a report was made, so putting it in the
message doesn't help.
- In terms of automation, a system would have to distinguish initial
reports from replies-to-the-report both in subject lines or in messages.
This is why I said the [officer] had to be the first thing on the
subject line (to prevent "Re:" messages from being taken as reports).
