Prefix to subject line (Tim Huetz)

Step random4444 at gmail.com
Fri Apr 20 12:18:01 EDT 2007


http://www.l33tskillz.org/writing/tagging-harmful/

Subject line munging is explained well and advised against in this article.
I'll copy the summary in for the lazy, in spite of that being one of the
points.  ;)


Some list administrators may not care much one way or the other about
Subject header tagging, but simply haven't bothered to turn off the
feature on their lists.  Other list administrators actively want to
have their lists perform Subject header tagging, because they believe
it provides a benefit for their subscribers.  But it doesn't:

    *Tagging violates the principle of minimal munging.

    *Tagging is no longer needed for effective filtering.

    *Tagging wastes precious Subject header space.

    *Tagging penalizing the conscientious in order to coddle the lazy.

    *Tagging discourages discussion.

    *Tagging is often broken.

    *Tagging doesn't scale to multiple lists.

    *The best that can be said about tagging is that it unreliably provides
      a small benefit (being able to more easily spot off-list replies to
      on-list topics) to a small subset of subscribers.

In the vast majority of cases, Subject header tagging is ill-advised,
and should not be performed.
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