Re: Consensus on "Re: "

From: Nick Boalch (n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk)
Date: Tue May 04 2004 - 11:55:51 CDT


Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:

>> I think this text is very slanted: you devote three lines to one of
>> the reasons why prepending "Re: " may be a good idea and then the
>> remaining five lines to explaining that that's 'broken'.
>
> First, that is not true; he has 4 lines explaining why adding "Re: "
> may seem like a good idea, not just 3 lines. Second, your version is
> slanted the other way; it obscures the fact that "Re: " is broken.

But this WG can't come to agreement about whether "Re: " is 'broken', so the
text shouldn't mention that, should it?

>> I would rather have:
>>
>> On the other hand, it is current practice to include a
>> back-reference, and the form is widely familiar to readers.
>> It is also used by some reading agents to sort messages for
>> display to users, whether as the only sorting system or as
>> part of a 'hybrid' thread-sorting algorithm.
>
> And I would rather have something with much stronger warnings than
> Eivind's version. In fact, I would rather that it be deprecated.
> Eivind's text appears to be a compromise.

But the paragraph I have redrafted there is the section of Eivind's text
(which overall, I agree, achieves a fair compromise) that deals specifically
with the pros of prepending "Re: ". In the original version it reads much like
an extension of the section detailing its cons, which I don't think achieves a
balance of the views on this WG.

Cheers,

N.

-- 
Nick Boalch, Research Student
School of Modern European Languages         Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 5780
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 5770
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7.