From: Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com)
Date: Sun Aug 01 2004 - 15:24:22 CDT
"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <Shmuel+gen@patriot.net> wrote:
> In <cee37k$vmf$1@gatekeeper.tmr.com>, on 07/30/2004
> at 02:30 PM, Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> said:
>>That's the desirable intent, but use of the term "subject" is likely
>>to cause confusion. Is there some reason why it was used instead of
>>"topic?" And if not, may I suggest that using topic would better
>>denote the intent of the WG?
>
> I concur; we should avoid the word "subject" when we are not referring
> to the Subject header field. similarly for the names of other header
> fields.
The original use in this thread was a quote from RFC 1036. I agree
that it's confusing; for _us_, the fact that the term was in lower
case should indicate that "topic" (or "thread") was meant, rather than
the contents of a specific header.
My claim was, and still is, that there are postings that are neither
(1) followups in the "reply" sense, nor (2) entirely new topics being
raised. RFC 1036 does _not_ specify whether those get References
headers. In the typical example we're looking at (multi-part FAQs),
we seem to agree that they should, the issue is how to handle the
wording.
Seth