prefixes (was Re: A REQUEST TO blahblah)

[Tom Ritchford <tom@swirly.com>]

Kim wrote:
>Mailing lists have been running on the internet for probably 20 
>years or more. It used to be that no lists had idiot features like 
>prefixes added on the subject line. That is because it used to be 
>that most of the people using the internet were at least bright 
>enough to figure out how to use their email program, and could set 
>up filters to do what they wanted with their email. There was no 
>need for such nonsense.
>
>In the past few years, just about everybody got on the internet, 
>including all the stupid people. Since the stupid users turned out 
>to be either too dumb or too lazy to create email filters, plus they 
>whine a lot, many list owners gave in and added all sorts of extra 
>crap to their lists to help the morons continue to be morons.
>
>However, I find within myself a strong aversion to being a 
>moron-enabler. I rather believe that people getting forced to learn 
>something might end up being better for it. I also don't see why I 
>should do a lot of extra work to add a feature that everybody 
>already has the ability to do with their mail program. If this 
>causes a few morons get frustrated and leave the list (assuming they 
>can figure out how to do that), that doesn't really seem like a bad 
>thing to me.

Hey, I have more filters than anyone I have ever met and I still 
really like to have
those prefixes.

0. prefixes make writing filters really easy.

1. sometimes my filters aren't right because people CC/BCC/whatever the 
list
     and I didn't think of all the cases
     and the email goes into my main mailbox.

2. sometimes people reply to my postings offlist and it's nice if these 
emails
     also go into the same box as the list.

3. I do check my mail quite often on the server, using pine, and again,
     the prefixes are really useful, because the filters don't go off
     until the mail hits my mail client.

I'm quite surprised that adding prefixes to your mailing list is a lot
of work... I do understand wanting to avoid doing more dumb computer
work, I make that decision all the time (otherwise I'd never get any
musical work done).

But aside from that, I can't see a single downside to prefixes.
There are a lot of interesting, constructive people who are
Internet morons and I have no objection to a few extra bytes
per subject to help these folks out.


back to lurk mode as I finish vast quantities of interesting work.
honest, interesting, honest.

      /t
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