On Sat, Dec 09, 2000 at 11:20 +0100, Peter van den Heuvel wrote:
One final remark. Moderation is a good thing, but please don't just do it to ban things. A simple classification with some tags like [basic] [home networks] [small organization] [large organization] [theory] [usage] or something like it would be of much more added value.
NO, PLEASE DON'T! Sorry to shout out this loud, but I really feel strong about this. The "[suse-security]" subject mangling is already bad enough when your message (it's just what I had a look at right now) has 9 - in words: nine - hooks to recognize it's a suse-security article. Go visit the archive and see how easily this one is broken and doubled, tripled, ... (the catchword is RFC2047, I guess -- or better put ignoring it). I consider this bloat and harmful since it only eats up space for no added information -- in the opposite it even *hides* the really important part: look at your mail folder with all the [suse-security] SuSE Security Announcement: $PACKAGE messages in it. You still have to open them all to learn what they are about, since the actual info starts at character position 45 and way off screen. :( And now imagine you get them via -announce ... I really *hate* this mangling and understand it's just done to hold the hands of the poorly equipped in terms of functional mail handling software. I consider it a dumb down approach. Let the subscribers be free to categorize and mangle the messages by themselves, but don't cripple the messages for those who want to get them the way they're written! Crippling things and have the users decripple it back is not what I would call efficient, either. As for the categories: Who should tack them on the message? And how long do they fit the message content? (Think of how long "long message" or "Question" suits, for instance. That's why they are misplaced in a subject and belong in the message's top at maximum.) A subject simply describing what the message is about would suffice - and is what the subject is meant for at first. Email might be an old mechanism in comparison to other computer stuff, but it definitely has the mechanisms for being efficient. If people only would demand more functional software than just good looking or "easy to use" (how long? especially after learning and growing) one. And if only they would use given and existing mechanisms instead of pushing things to where they don't work any longer. virtually yours 82D1 9B9C 01DC 4FB4 D7B4 61BE 3F49 4F77 72DE DA76 Gerhard Sittig true | mail -s "get gpg key" Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net -- If you don't understand or are scared by any of the above ask your parents or an adult to help you.