On Thu, 27 Nov 2003 02:43, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
A fair point to raise. But I did consider it...and concluded that
Keywords is generally unused precisely *because* there are no global
conventions about ketyword meanings.
I'd be more inclined to think that they are unused because they're not worth
the effort. Keywords don't need global meanings to be useful; merely
institutional meanings. You can search RFCs by keyword, for example, and
that's modestly useful given that there's a natural (domain-specific) lexicon
from which to select kywords.
But unless you're explicitly planning on making your email searchable, why
would you use keywords? Who knows: maybe some mailing lists do practice good
keyword culture. I haven't seen any evidence of it, but I wouldn't presume to
call the "keywords" field "unused" on that basis.
I don't have any fundamental objection to the use of the "keywords" field for
this purpose, but I think that any special universally-meaningful keywords
which are introduced should be given their own "namespace", purely out of
respect for the original intent of the field. It also lends the technique an
air of generality and extensibility, even if we have no desire to extend it
further. Define the keyword in a way that makes it unlikely to clash with
natural language at all, although it may contain "advertising" or "bulk" as a
part (presumably a suffix).
Regards,
TFBW
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