"Re:" subject mail issue

[David Woodhouse]

On Sun, 2013-07-07 at 08:30 +0100, Shiner wrote:
> I'll be surprised if I see this though!
> There is something really odd about the way this mailing list works.
> <sigh>

Not really. The rules are the same as fairly much every other mailing
list or effective email environment I've ever encountered; it's just
that they are actually *enforced* (well, in part).

See http://david.woodhou.se/email.html if you need to be reminded.

But basically: Don't hit 'reply' on an existing message and then change
the subject. Your message will *still* be a reply to the one you were
looking at when you hit 'reply', and will be part of that thread. This
is called "thread hijacking", and is frowned upon because you pollute an
existing thread with something completely unrelated.

The mailing list checks for this and traps messages for moderation if
they have the References: or In-Reply-To: headers that mark them as
being a reply, but no 'Re:' in the subject.

Conversely, if you *do* want to reply then do so properly so that it
*is* part of the thread. The software will also trap messages which *do*
have 'Re:' in the subject but don't have the threading headers. This can
happen when you reply with certain broken software, or when you reply
from a list archive which doesn't include the right headers in its
mailto: link. Or if you just do something odd with non-broken software,
of course.

Other standard rules of etiquette also apply: You quote *only* what you
absolutely need to repeat from the previous email for context; not the
whole thing. And you place your reply *below* that. We don't have
automatic filters for that yet, but it something I've often
contemplated. It's not actually hard to find the previous message and
*see* if it was quoted in its entirety, and see whether any new content
is above or below that.

Oh, and the list doesn't accept HTML either, of course. Plain text only.

-- 
dwmw2

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