My thoughts on this topic (not that they matter that much....) I understand what you're saying and why. But, a good number of people do not use thread capable clients, or do not use this feature. So, is it better to make it easier on those who do, or those who don't? How do you make the judgement call?
For myself, I use KMail, which can handle the threaded messages. But I have not enabled this option nor am likely too. I prefer to see my messages in reverse chronological order, and am able to follow the threads by reading the messages. For CLUG, I do read every message, for other mailing lists, I simply skim the subjects for topics that are pertinent to me or that I have been following. If someone "hijacks" a thread, it makes no difference to me. Of course, this may not apply to everyone. I agree that it is bad form to hijack a thread (i.e reply to an existing message to easily select the TO address, but change the subject and body to be unrelated to the original message). But having been on a number of mailing lists, it happens occasionally, and sometimes on purpose, or with good reasons. It is common practice as well to change the subject when a thread is being changed to a different subject to something like "Subject: New subject (was old subject)". But this doesn't happen every time. My personal opinion (again) is that if you choose to use the threading features of a mail client, then you must accept that thread hijacking will and does happen, and deal with it. Those who do not use threading features (or have a mail client capable of it), must accept that messages aren't conveniently grouped, and develop some skill and/or patience in following a thread. There's pro's and con's either way, but dictating how someone should be using their tools (in this case the mail client, and the mailing list) is not the answer. Open Source is all about choice. My thoughts... not yours... <smiles> Shawn On Thursday 16 September 2004 20:51, Andrew J. Kopciuch wrote: > I just read through the rules for the CLUG mailing lists. There is no > mention of thread hijacking. I have noticed this has been happening in > greater amounts lately. > > Thread hijacking is considered "bad form" on public mail lists and forums. > This is because it defeats the purpose of mail clients that have the > ability to sort messages by thread. > > Should there not be some mention of it in the mailing list rules? > > > Andy > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
