At 10:42 AM 3/4/99 -0500, Bernie Cosell wrote:
>Let in ask, luddite that I am, about another relative-newness that seems
>to be a loser and I sure hope dies a worthy death [although since it is
>onelist [among others] perpetrating it, as with HTML I suspect
>rationality and tradition are doomed]:
>
>Gripe of the day is putting the list-name as a prefix on the subject
>line. Majordomo has had the ability to do this for some time, but as far
>as I know, virtually every list admin has had the good sense *not* to
>enable this.
I disagree that not enabling this is good sense.
>This morning, I got treated to the following:
>
>[Home-Sat] Re: [[Home-Sat] Re: [[Home-Sat] DC Block Splitters]]
Majordomo does not do this. It searches for the pattern anywhere on the
subject line before inserting it. Thus, if the first subject is:
Subject: fubar
Majordomo will mung it to
Subject: [x] fubar
but when someone replies to that such that the subject is
Subject: Re: [x] fubar
Majordomo will pass it through without changing it.
> (which brings up a more subtle problem of this style of list setup:
> if it is gatewayed to usenet [as it is in this case] it is actually
> in violation of rfc850:
>
> If the article is submitted in response to another article
> (e.g., is a "followup") the default subject should begin
> with the four characters "Re: " and the References line is
> required. (The user might wish to edit the subject of the
> followup, but the default should begin with "Re: ".)
>
> Alas, we didn't have the foresight to make a similar rule for
> email...
>
>So, am I just being a luddite, yet again, or should I send complaints to
>onelist [although fat lot of good it'll do I suspect]? Would any of you
>actually make use of this 'feature' of Majordomo [or another listserv]?
>Should we/i suggest to the greatcircle folk to remove it from majordomo
>as being a bad idea?
I would put subject munging back in if it were removed, or not downgrade to
a version of an MLM that did not support it.
If the above is a onelist list, with all of the insertions, then they are
clearly not up to best practice. Simply searching for the pattern before
inserting it fixes the problem you point out here.
--
That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.
That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway.
Nick Simicich mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] or (last choice)
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World!
