At 11:58 AM -0400 6/29/99, John R Levine wrote:
>> Sorting is immensely simplified by the use of subject prefixes.
>
> I don't find that at all.
Agreed. With the exception of the AOL mail client (and frankly, they
should just join the 19th century), if you don't have mail filtering
capabilities in your client, it's because you don't want them. This
can (and should) be done on the client side, rather than forcing it
on everyone on the list.
Harkening back to the user surveys and the reply-to stuff of the
other night, this is the OTHER thing that invariably seems to crop up
every few months on one list or another, and invariably comes down to
one or two noisy people who want it their way, period. And whenever I
run a user survey, most people don't care, but of those that do, most
don't want subject prefixes.
I don't like subject prefixes for another reason: the subject is the
key thing people use to determine whether or not to read an e-mail
message. In most clients, you have effectively 45-60 characters to
define that subject. Now, you take away 10% or more of that just so
people can do a sort-by-subject-line, when they could do that in
other ways already. It really limits the ability to communicate the
content of the message, and makes it harder for most folks to figure
out whether they want to read a message before opening it. So I think
it actually creates more hassle than it solves. And it solves that
hassle for a relatively few people, since most of humanity now has
the ability to set up their mailers to do this if they really want
to. Me, I simply filter every mailing list into its own folder, so I
can read each one in context,a nd so none of my mail lists affect my
personal e-mail or get in the way until I have time to read them.
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
The Jedi that I admire most met up with Darth Maul and now he's toast...
(Weird Al Yankovic - The Saga Begins)
