ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: subject_prefix on IETF Discuss?

2011-08-11 12:01:42
On Aug 11, 2011, at 12:26 PM, Barry Leiba wrote:

List-Id: is only useful for folks who have either lots of time on
their hands, or want to use automatic archival and have no desire
to actually process the email they're receiving.
...
I'm a simple human being that can focus his mind and his eyesight
only on one single thing at a time, so everything has to be serialized
anyway, and no amount of slicing and dicing the stuff will reduce
the amount of processing -- but most of it will incur additional actions
to open it when it is not queued in a single inbox.

Martin, please don't assume that everyone deals with their email the
way you do.  I sort my mail using List-ID header fields, each list's
messages go into a separate mailbox (organized much the way Richard
Kulawiec suggests), and I find it *fabulously* useful and efficient.
Still, I would never suggest that you had to do it that way, nor that
your way isn't useful.  Your way isn't useful FOR ME.  Apparently, my
way isn't useful FOR YOU.  À chacun, son goût, after all.

Something that I've observed for many years is that people really don't like to 
change the tools and practices that they have used regularly and for a long 
time, even when new tools and/or practices are more functional.

(It turns out that I'm the same way.   Back in the winter of 1980 I ported 
James Gosling's Emacs to VMS.  I haven't used Gosling Emacs since circa 1985, 
but I'm still using Gosling's key bindings.  I've ported those key bindings to 
every editor I've used since then.  I programmed almost exclusively in C 
between 1980 and 2009 or so, at which point I started learning Python and now 
write most of my code in it.  I have no regrets about learning Python, but I 
also have no regrets at sticking with C for so long.   Even though GUI 
interfaces have long since become commonplace on desktops, the application that 
I use most is still a terminal emulator as an interface to bash.   And I'd 
still be using MH to read my mail if it had decent IMAP support.)

So if people want to stick with mail user agents that don't recognize List-ID, 
if they want to have all of their mail end up in one mailbox, if they want to 
use "sort by subject" to classify their incoming mail - I don't blame them.   
Sure there are better tools these days, but it's understandable if they are 
hesitant to invest the time required to evaluate and learn new tools and new 
ways of handling mail, and potentially disrupt their ability to communicate 
while doing so.

Munging the subject field of mailing list traffic is really ugly, but many 
people have long-entrenched work habits that rely on it.  I don't think that 
existing lists should change their behavior, and I certainly don't think it 
should be the default behavior for new lists, but I would like to see it be a 
subscriber option for new lists.

Keith

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf