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Prefixing Mailing List Subject
On virtually any mailing list sooner or later
it is requested to introduce or remove the prefix in the
subject like [our-list].
Add prefix on your own?
Many people proposing not to add a prefix argue that you can
easily add a prefix on your own e.g. via procmail.
Well, me saying the same I finally tried this simple thing
and it turned out to be more complex than I thought.
More or less you need to implement the whole logic for clean
prefixes that is already implemented in the mailing list software.
This includes:
- It is not sufficient to just substitute "^Subject: "
by "^Subject: [prefix] " because you will not match
other occurences of the prefix after "Re:", "AW:" and
such.
- If you eliminate all occurences somehow, then you
will have some strange left-over "Re:" etc.
- In case you manage even this, you should eliminate the
prefix for outgoing replies. If not everyone
on the mailing list does so you will find yourself
having to match different spellings of [prefix]: [pre-fix], [PREFIX], ...
You better keep all this handling at a single place, the mailing list software,
instead of doing it on your own!
No prefix needed, just filter into folders?
Some people say, that a mailing list should not be
prefixed because people can autmatically filter the incoming
emails into corresponding folders.
Well, yes they can, but some people don't (want) and some others
do, but still prefer prefixes due to various reasons.
Here I asked back: Why don't you just remove the prefix while
filtering? In contrast to adding a prefix, the removal
is really simple. Its always at the same place with the
same spelling and with only a single occurance.
Well, it turned out that this is not as easy either since
the prefix ist then set to the wrong position (ie. before "Re"
and not after) and sof far no ML software seems to fix this on
its own.
Conclusion: Improve ML software!
There is no other sensible way than letting the ML software care for
prefixing. Whats missing to make everyone happy is
to allow individual prefixing and handle this accordingly.
MailMan does not allow this yet and I am not aware of
any that does.
Some people say that it is the wrong idea to make
the ML software intellegent in this regard, because
it will turn out to be too cleaver for its own good.
I.e. do string changes that will confuse the user or change the meaning.
So far, I never saw a real life example for this. If you know
one, let me know the link. Uptothen I belive that this is more
a theoretical problem rather than something that hurts people
in a systematic manner.
2004/10/05
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