[maemo-developers] [maemo-devel] List emails subject prefix

[From: Hartti Suomela]

Mike, I think Edward is making a valid point. The archived email threads you
included in your response are more than 2 years old. You said yourself that
many new people are joining and have joined the mailing list recently
("tremendous influx of new users"). It is entirely possible that the general
opinion of the participants has changed.

Personally I like email subject prefixes. But I can live without them as
well, no biggie.

What comes to the arguments for not adding a subject header prefix in the
7-year-old document you pointed to - those are of varying quality.
Especially I disagree with the statements "Tagging is no longer needed for
filtering" (maybe so, but it fits the workflow of certain people), "Coddling
the Lazy, Penalizing the Conscientious" (here the author is making an
incorrect assumption that people do not set up their email clients to filter
their emails only because of laziness - again workflow/working style thing)
and "Tagging Discourages Discussion" (the inflammatory responses leading to
flamewars are discouraging people from discussing on these mailing lists - I
for one am now concerned what kind of responses I will get to this
message..).
Additionally I do not buy the "wasting space" argument but that is very much
personal opinion based on my preference of using laptop much more than my
handheld device for reading these emails and I understand that long prefixes
could create problems when reading emails on a small screen device (such as
N900)

Hartti "a newcomer on these lists as well" Suomela

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Mike Lococo <mikelococo at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have been very concerned about a general tenor of this list.  It
>> seems like some are suggesting that if you haven't been on the list
>> long enough, if you don't use the right email client, and several
>> other comments I've heard recently, then you aren't good enough to be
>> on this list.  Instead, we need to be welcoming old and new, people
>> using pine, elm, modest, Outlook or whatever email client.
>>
>
> While I know that you're referring to other threads as well, and while the
> responses to Edward's post weren't all as kind or thoughtful as they could
> have been, it should be noted that subject prefixes are a well-known
> hot-button topic (on many lists, not just this one). Furthermore, they've
> been discussed and rejected here:
>
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/maemo/developers/30148#30148
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/maemo/developers/16800#16800
>
> Among the litany of good reasons against subject tagging [1], we have the
> added reason that screen real-estate on mobile devices is precious and long
> subject-lines are especially problematic for the many individuals reading
> this list on small-screened maemo-devices.
>
> While we as a community can always aim to improve our tone and focus
> energies better, I don't think this was a case of "jump on the newcomer".
>  It's a FAQ for mailing list administration in general, an AQ for the
> maemo-* lists, and an issue both sides tend to feel strongly about.  With
> the tremendous influx of new users right now, there are bound to be some
> growing pains.  That's not an excuse for bad-behavior, we still need to
> police ourselves, but it's worth keeping in mind.
>
> Soooo... welcome aboard Edward.  Thanks for your suggestion, please
> consider checking the archives before posting next time because this was
> discussed already.
>
> Cheers,
> Mike Lococo
>
> [1] http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/qralston/writing/tagging-harmful/
>
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>
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