[Novalug] OT List? (greg pryzby)

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Wed Sep 16 13:58:56 EDT 2009


From: Roger W. Broseus <rogerb@bronord.com>
> For me, right up there with OT is the need to trim postings so that
> long-winded back-and-forth is removed surgically by those who post.

From: Beartooth <beartooth@Beartooth.Info>

> YES, in thunder!

And enter yet another meta-discussion.  ;)

The top v. bottom-posting, trimming, etc... are debated as well.  Most of
the time, it's a result in a change of the world by the RFC-ignorant generation.

Anyone remember the O'Reilly Mail and UseNet posting guidelines circa late
'80s?  ;)

Because NNTP and SMTP track Message-ID, it was _recommended_
that you actually change the subject -- e.g., prepend new subject w/WAS and
old when it changed sigificantly, etc..., prepend "OT" and other things, etc...

Do you know _how_ many times I've been lectured about doing that by the
RFC-ignorant generation?  Why?  All because their SMTP clients don't honor
Message-ID, or did not in earlier versions.  And those discussions went 100+
posts?

If I was lucky, there was another Internet user of the '80s who would point out
that I'm just using the O'Reilly guidelines, and people should learn them.
Ironically enough, web archives (e.g., Mailman/Pipermail) and some web form
front-ends honor Message-ID, and thread correctly as well.

I think the first two releases GMail was the final death of it as well, because
people threaded on subject instead of threading on Message-ID.  Just another
example of "we are the standard" from Google, which is a repeat of Microsoft
some 20 years later.

And yet I get thanked for people who find threads in Google searches for
changing the subject, appending the command/tool to use to the subject,
etc... so they didn't have to search through 100+ responses.

We've honestly regressed.  Concepts that are 25+ years old have been lost.
Message-ID exists for a reason.

 


-- 
Bryan J  Smith           Professional, Technical Annoyance 
Linked Profile:         http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith 
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