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

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Lyle" == Lyle Saxon <Lyle> writes:

    Lyle> I nearly always change the title when responding to personal
    Lyle> e-mail, but in a group situation I've always thought that it
    Lyle> was rude to change the title of something unless there was a
    Lyle> definitive shift away from the original topic under
    Lyle> discussion.

People do it all the time on Usenet, because essentially all
newreaders do threading properly (ie, via the message pointers in
References).

Consider subsetting a large message into subthreads.  Is that a
definitive shift?  IMO probably not though YMMV.  But (1) many people
may not be interested in this particular subtopic and (2) you might
wish to try to restrict discussion in "your" subthread to that
subtopic.  I think both reasons clearly justify changing the subject,
assuming threading readers.

If there's a lot of busted MUAs in the mix, then it's a more difficult
decision, and I'm not going to advocate one way or the other.

-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.