On Sat, 2010-06-26 at 16:56 +0200, Kåre Fiedler Christiansen wrote: > On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 15:03, Patrick O'Callaghan <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Fri, 2010-06-25 at 08:59 +0530, vijay singh wrote: > >> Hello, > >> I am just following what is written in top mailing list. > >> > >> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > >> than "Re: Contents of evolution-list digest..." > >> > >> So i am replaying to list by editing my subject> > >> > >> Please let me know what is problem on this ?? > > > > I'm not sure who gave you that advice (I've been off the list for a > > couple of days) but although I'm sure it was well-intentioned, it gives > > the misleading impression that replying to a digest is OK as long as you > > change the Subject line. > > That advice is from the default Mailman introduction to digests. It's > written before all the messages in the digest.
So it is. As I never use digests and certainly don't read them when they're replied to, I hadn't noticed it. > > It's not. > > > > There is *no* circumstance in which replying to a digest is acceptable. > > Mailing list digests are designed as a strictly read-only channel. If > > you ever need to reply to message contained in a digest, post your reply > > as an entirely separate (new) message and copy the correct Subject line, > > or (better) go into the Gmane news-to-mail service (gmane.org) and post > > a reply to that specific message. > > I can't see how replying to a digest is any worse than posting an > entirely new message (providing you edit the subject line, and snip > off all irrelevant quoted material, of course). I contend that it is worse because you're replying to a message that never appeared on the list, i.e. the digest itself. It's a reply to nothing. Changing the Subject line is a palliative at best as it still doesn't restore the threading (same goes for people who hijack threads). > In fact, chances are > that if you start a new message rather than choose reply, you will end > up with a message where it's hard to distinguish between new and > quoted material, because insering "> " before each line, and > re-breaking the lines is so much trouble. Right-click and select "paste quotation". > I agree that it's much better to reply to the individual messages, but > this is infeasible if you receive the mailing list in digests. Yes, > going to gmane.org works - but if you chose to read the mailing list > as digests, chances are that you're not using gmane, which makes it a > high-barrier approach, just ot reply to messages. I take the view that if anyone who intends to participate fully in the list and reply to messages shouldn't be using digests in the first place. > As long as digests exist, I can't see any way we will ever avoid > having broken threads. Indeed. My vote is to eliminate digests entirely, but it's not my call. > Talking of guidelines, I feel that people on this list are a little > heavy-handed in trying to enforce the guidelines. It's not that I > disagree with any of them (and I too believe that digests are a lot > more trouble than they're worth), but replying to messages only to > point out when people break the guidelines is frankly annoying to both > the (probably inadvertant) original poster, and other people who read > the noise. I suggest that pointing out the guidelines is best done as > a helpful pointer, along with the reply to whatever the poster was > asking. This will both give the result of removing messages with no > other content than rule-enforcement, and (hopefully) better motivation > for actually listening to the advice. My personal policy is to call out replies to digests and thread hijacks as being particularly annoying. I intentionally avoid replying to the poster's question because that will only encourage the (broken) thread to continue. Other annoyances such as top-posting or using HTML I only point out if I'm also commenting on the actual content. Some people do find this annoying, but what's to be done? If no-one complains there's no incentive to change. Sometimes I complain off-list, but then of course no-one else will notice that certain things are frowned on. It's a fine line. poc _______________________________________________ evolution-list mailing list [email protected] To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
