Re: Subject Tag (Opinions from a developer)

[Duncan Findlay <du...@debian.org>]

On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 04:16:05PM -0500, Andy Donovan wrote:
> me neither ... just a little tag, [SA] would be helpful, and as you
> mentioned 'Every' list I'm on also has the tag .. I thought it was
> the norm.

In the interests of killing this thread, and because somebody asked us
"list-owners" to comment, here is my personal opinion.

1. We _could_ enable a subject tag if we wanted to, however, judging
by their silence, the other developers agree with me in not wanting a
tag.

2. Spamassassin-users is a very high volume list. If you are getting
all your mail in one folder, then I can see that a subject tag would
be useful, as a visual identifier. However, with such a high volume of
e-mail in one folder, it'd be a far better solution to use client-side
filtering on the List-Id: header (or another header). If your client
doesn't allow filtering on arbitrary headers, it is broken. Use a
different client. You can even get away with using a rule based on the
To: and/or Cc: headers.

3. Your assertion that adding a subject tag is the norm is simply
false. The only lists that I'm on that have subject tags are run by
sf.net (where it may not be possible? to remove the tag) and one or
two are very low volume lists run by my school. I understand that a
subject tag can be useful, especially for low volume lists, dealing
with non-technical content. However, high volume lists, where the
majority of subscribers are relatively good with technical stuff are
not suited to subject tags. There are simply better ways of sorting
mail.

4. It's not up to you. :-) I don't mean this to sound cruel, but the
truth is, it's the developers that run the lists, and we are able to
filter our mail, and we expect the same from you. :-)

Let's end this thread, and stop littering this list with unnecessary
e-mail.

-- 
Duncan Findlay