Re: [tlug] "Subject:" (The message doesn't need to be in the title....)

["Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon" <ronfaxon@example.com>]

Evan Monroig wrote:

> > [LHS] Why put the message in the title?  Are you afraid people are going 
> > to delete your message when they see your name and thus you try to get the 
> > message into the title to force them to read at least a little of what 
> > you want to say before the message is vaporized?

> Personnally I understand that. E-mail subject is supposed to give a
> summary of the message body.
>  In a perfect world, everybody would change the subject after writing
> their emails, no MUA would be broken, and people would be productive
> since they would easily spot the most interesting e-mails in their
> boxes. 
>  Now everything is not perfect, and I don't want to argue as to whether
> Jim is right or not. I just understand what he does, as well as I
> understand that it is a pain for those using broken MUAs.

I nearly always change the title when responding to personal e-mail, but
in a group situation I've always thought that it was rude to change the
title of something unless there was a definitive shift away from the
original topic under discussion.  If people would prefer to read
different titles for each and every message, I'm  more than happy to
oblige!  In fact, it's downright fun thinking up titles to what you've
written and I suppose it's fun to obliterate the opponent's title (but
why opponent...? Ah... this could be the problem!) with your own.  As
for "broken MUA's", the reality is that many on the list are using
GMail, so why not give them some consideration and only change the title
when the topic has shifted into entirely new directions?

Lyle