[Mailman-developers] Subject line, Re:, subject prefix (a small patch)

[John Viega]

> On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, John Viega wrote:
> 
> > One thing I've seen some mailers do which I have considered for mailman
> > is to collapse Re: Re: into Re[2]: and Re: Re[n]: into Re[n+1]:.
> 
> My feeling still is pretty soundly that mailman should do minimal
> messing with the subject line.  It makes sense for it to introduce the
> prefix, and avoid duplicating it if already there - that seems clearly
> within the purview of the mailing list.  It clearly should not introduce
> any "Re"s of it's own, and it i do not think it should mess with "Re"s
> that users introduce.  It may be the user's mailer is fucked, and adding
> re's when it shouldn't - but it doesn't seem to me to be mailman's place
> to rectify that.
> 
> Ken


To a degree I agree.  However, I've been asked for such a feature many times,
mainly by people who have mailers that don't thread on their own.  If you
change Re: to Re[1]: then you'll generally always get an extra Re and will
update things properly.

That having been said, I guess I'm inclined to agree that it shouldn't be
there anyway.