On Tuesday, October 29, 2002, at 11:35 AM, Jay Sekora wrote:

...

well, To: is who the email is sent to. CC: are other interested parties.

And who gets to decide that - the actual creator of the content who understands what the message is about, or a piece of infrastructure software that treats all messages it receives the same way?

Now we start getting into heavy philosophical issues about all this. Which means there are likely no "right" answers in an objective sense. I say that up front, just in case. I want folks to know I'm not arguing "I'm right", but "this is how I think it ought to be". Maybe a minor semantical shift, but a key one, IMHO.

I don't mind the subject-munging that mailman does if the list owner adds an identifying tag because that's added to the existing header the composer typed; the original information is still there.

OTOH, I *really* hate subject munging. here's why: my research shows that the subject line is the A-number-1 determinator of whether a user opens a piece of email or not. That's THE key item of information for whether it gets deleted out of the summary listing unread or not.

The subject line is ALREADY seriously challenged as an information source -- effectively, it's limited to about 50 characters by most mail clients, in some cases, that can be as low as 35 characters in some mail clients.

So when you tell me that the original author only has 50 characters to convince someone to open their piece of email, but you think it's okay for the MLM to take 10-15% of that space, and the 10-15% PRIME space at the front of the line, to install a flag that already exists elsewhere in the headers (list-id, sender, etc), I have problems with that. You've effectively kicked the user out of a good chunk of his own space advertising why someone should read that message, and stuffed in the equivalent of a pop-up ad into that space for the mailing list.

I consider that a horrible tradeoff. I won't go so far as to call it an abuse of the subject line, but I think it's really hurting the intent of the user, which is to give them the ability to convince someone to read that message.

To me, that's a much bigger sin than regularizing how the To and CC are presented, because if nothing else, that's an attempt to make it easier to use that information without depending on how the original user presented it. After all, you're dependin on them doing the to: list, CC: you, and while that might be true, it's not guaranteed true. And MLMs have played with it as well. This is just a new take on how to structure it.

Do you think it would make sense, on most lists, to *replace* the subject with (eg) "Subject: Mail from $sender to $listname on $date"? That's the same sort of thing.

No. I argue the opposite, that subject line is one of the headers taht I consider MOST untouchable.

I'm assuming that the person who typed in the message put the list address where s/he thought it belonged. I want to *know* where that person thought it belonged.

then why don't you care what the person put in the subject line? addresses are -- addresses. The subject line is the author's own thought on the piece of email. But it's okay to play with that, but not standardize the look of the addresses? To/cc/bcc is really an artificial construct in the email world, anyway, a hangover from the paper days. The subject line is the author's knock on your front door.

-- Chuq Von Rospach, Architech chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/

IMHO: Jargon. Acronym for In My Humble Opinion. Used to flag as an opinion something that is clearly from context an opinion to everyone except the mentally dense. Opinions flagged by IMHO are actually rarely humble. IMHO. (source: third unabridged dictionary of chuqui-isms).

On Tuesday, October 29, 2002, at 11:35 AM, Jay Sekora wrote:

...

well, To: is who the email is sent to. CC: are other interested parties.

And who gets to decide that - the actual creator of the content who understands what the message is about, or a piece of infrastructure software that treats all messages it receives the same way?

Now we start getting into heavy philosophical issues about all this. Which means there are likely no "right" answers in an objective sense. I say that up front, just in case. I want folks to know I'm not arguing "I'm right", but "this is how I think it ought to be". Maybe a minor semantical shift, but a key one, IMHO.

I don't mind the subject-munging that mailman does if the list owner adds an identifying tag because that's added to the existing header the composer typed; the original information is still there.

OTOH, I *really* hate subject munging. here's why: my research shows that the subject line is the A-number-1 determinator of whether a user opens a piece of email or not. That's THE key item of information for whether it gets deleted out of the summary listing unread or not.

The subject line is ALREADY seriously challenged as an information source -- effectively, it's limited to about 50 characters by most mail clients, in some cases, that can be as low as 35 characters in some mail clients.

So when you tell me that the original author only has 50 characters to convince someone to open their piece of email, but you think it's okay for the MLM to take 10-15% of that space, and the 10-15% PRIME space at the front of the line, to install a flag that already exists elsewhere in the headers (list-id, sender, etc), I have problems with that. You've effectively kicked the user out of a good chunk of his own space advertising why someone should read that message, and stuffed in the equivalent of a pop-up ad into that space for the mailing list.

I consider that a horrible tradeoff. I won't go so far as to call it an abuse of the subject line, but I think it's really hurting the intent of the user, which is to give them the ability to convince someone to read that message.

To me, that's a much bigger sin than regularizing how the To and CC are presented, because if nothing else, that's an attempt to make it easier to use that information without depending on how the original user presented it. After all, you're dependin on them doing the to: list, CC: you, and while that might be true, it's not guaranteed true. And MLMs have played with it as well. This is just a new take on how to structure it.

Do you think it would make sense, on most lists, to *replace* the subject with (eg) "Subject: Mail from $sender to $listname on $date"? That's the same sort of thing.

No. I argue the opposite, that subject line is one of the headers taht I consider MOST untouchable.

I'm assuming that the person who typed in the message put the list address where s/he thought it belonged. I want to *know* where that person thought it belonged.

then why don't you care what the person put in the subject line? addresses are -- addresses. The subject line is the author's own thought on the piece of email. But it's okay to play with that, but not standardize the look of the addresses? To/cc/bcc is really an artificial construct in the email world, anyway, a hangover from the paper days. The subject line is the author's knock on your front door.

-- Chuq Von Rospach, Architech chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/

IMHO: Jargon. Acronym for In My Humble Opinion. Used to flag as an opinion something that is clearly from context an opinion to everyone except the mentally dense. Opinions flagged by IMHO are actually rarely humble. IMHO. (source: third unabridged dictionary of chuqui-isms).