mailing list subject lines
Mike A. Harris
mharris at redhat.com
Mon Nov 10 08:32:51 UTC 2003
On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Fotios Nastos wrote:
>Can I request that the mailing list administrators set-up the mailing list so
>that emails are sent with something like "[fedora]" prepended to the subject
>line?
You can request it, but it almost certainly will be refused,
because there is no good reason for that.
>I know, that I sound like I am whining (I guess I am), and that some people
>use email programs that automatically filter incoming mail, but I suspect
>that this is a high-volume list, and it would really help some list-members.
There are proper mail headers which are specifically intended for
use for filtering on, in particular:
X-BeenThere:
X-Mailing-List:
and other headers. I filter using X-BeenThere myself, however
others are likely to recommend a different header. It's largely
personal preference and experimentation as to which one works
best for an individual however, so try one of the above and see
if it works for you, or try one of the other suggestions others
will likely make.
Having crap added to subject headers though, is not necessary,
and it reduces the visible subject for no good reason.
>The other mailing lists I'm subscribed to prepend their subject
>lines with [mailing-list name] and it makes it much easier to
>get a handle on my inbox in the mornings.
That is because:
1) GNU mailman defaults to that braindead setting of putting
[listname] in the subject for some unknown reason.
2) A lot of people who want to filter email think that the only
way of doing it is if [listname] is in the subject, which is
incorrect. Once they are made aware that this should be done
using X-BeenThere, X-Mailing-List or other headers, they can
filter mail into folders perfectly well without scuffing up
the subject line.
All Red Hat mailing lists have the [listname] stuff removed
intentionally, because it is unnecessary and annoying to many
people, and provides no really new functionality that doesn't
already exist with existing headers. For those who like the
[listname] to appear in the subject anyway, such as if they file
multiple mailing lists into one folder and want to visually
differentiate between them, they can modify their mail filter
rules to add [something] into the subject line for themselves
using the "formail" program which comes with procmail.
Best of both worlds.
--
Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat
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