Brian Wilson wrote:
On Mar 3, 2007, at 4:41 PM, Mário Gamito wrote:
Don Ireland wrote:
Every email list I've ever subscribed to has had something in the
subject line (usually in square brackets) to identify 1) that it is a
mailing list and 2) what list it is.
Maybe, just maybe, you can filter through e-mail adresseses instead of
subjects.
-- Mário Gamito
This works until someone's reply to your posting is sent directly to you
instead of to the mailing list. In order for the reply to be threaded
properly with other messages in the thread, it needs to be put into the
same folder.
That defeats the whole purpose of replying directly -- so that the
person you reply directly to is sure to see it. If it's moved into the
folder with all the other list messages (and the duplicate copy sent to
the list... so now you'd have two copies of the same message threaded
for you) there's a pretty good chance that it'll go un-noticed.
I know that, I for one, am less likely to follow up on a thread seeking
my help if I'm not copied on it. I wouldn't be surprised that others
also don't have the time to read thousands of list messages a day to
keep up with the threads they're involved with (or even just remember
all the threads that they're involved with so they can just read those
threads).
The above reasoning is why I sometimes copy the people involved in the
thread and sometimes just send directly to the list. If I think they,
or I, would benefit from seeing the message then they get a copy. If
they never send copies to others I usually don't send them a copy. If
I'm really busy or lazy everyone gets a copy since it's faster for me.
An easy way to direct it to a folder is basing your rules
off some characteristic that message it originally had (i.e. the
subject). I tend to agree that it would be nice if the mailing list had
a subject prefix like most other mailing lists. If not to sort mail, at
least to be able to categorize it mentally should you not classify your
mail into folders.
Well, the PMC (i) doesn't have control over the mailing list software to
do it, and (ii) doesn't want to do it anyway. So it's not likely going
to change.
If you really want to see subject line tags get your MDA to add them
locally when it sees a List-Id header and then just delete the duplicate
copies (sent to you directly) manually if they are confusing you.
Daryl
