OFFTOPIC Re: [Mailman-Users] Archive URL in postings (2.1b3)

[J C Lawrence]

On 30 Oct 2002 09:33:18 +0000 
Nigel Metheringham <Nigel.Metheringham at dev.InTechnology.co.uk> wrote:

> [Interesting to see that the Mail List Experts (presumably a mailman
> list of this type could loosely be described as that) still suffer
> from the 2000 threads under one unrelated subject problem :-) ]

I'll confess that I gave up on Subject; years ago.

> On Wed, 2002-10-30 at 03:37, J C Lawrence wrote:
>> On Tue, 29 Oct 2002 10:56:39 -0800 (PST) alex wetmore
>> <alex at phred.org> wrote:

>> We should start out admitting that such mail systems are broken and
>> then decide how far we want to cater to such broken systems.

> Accepting that it is broken to attempt to duplicate filter on message
> id, its also broken to send out different messages with the same
> message id - if only for the sake of the poor schmuck attempting to
> work through his MTA logs where 1000 different (different injection,
> sender and recipient) messages all have the same message id.  It can
> be done but it gets much harder...

<nods violently in agreement>

> Oh rats - I guess that totally breaks threading then.... this is a
> horrid morass.

Yes, and thus the root of the question on whether MLM's should rewrite
Message-ID.  I tend to the side that they shouldn't on the principle of
least surprise and the fact that a reply to the private fork which is
CC'ed to the list won't thread against the list-form of the original
message.

> To go back to the To header handling.  The basic reason I don't like
> it is because I use the headers to mentally process a message's
> relevance to me - along with various other things.  A message that has
> my name in the To/Cc line I assume the sender had a reason for
> including me - ie I was involved in the thread previously and so might
> be expected to continue an interest.  Now I will have 2 copies of that
> mail - main mailbox and list mailbox - but I generally always reply
> from the list mailbox.  The To mangling breaks my mental processes
> (and I'm getting too old to go and buy some more) without any real
> gain that I can see.  It looks too much like a spammers trick to
> persuade me its really a personal message.

I don't disagree.

However we're talking about an option here, not a mandate.  Privately I
want Mailman's VERP-ish knobs and I'll play with personalistion of To:
on my smaller lists to see how that goes before possibly rolling out to
the larger lists if well received.  BUT, when using Mailman as a
corporate representation tool (which I do), eg as a front face to
marketing or engineering, then personalising To: is flat out wonderful
and does exactly what I (as the list owner and target of Marketing's ire
in those cases) want.

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.