Re: A Suggestion to Web Adminstrators

["Willem-Jan Markerink" <w.j.markerink@xxxxx>]

On 31 Jan 00 at 22:24, felix wrote:

> I really love our mailing list, but I have been bothered
> by one thing from the very beginning: we don't have a 
> "mailing list group name" in front of each message. 
> So for a person like me who have subscribed to a couple of
> mailing lists, it is really a pain in the neck trying to 
> group them. 
> 
> As for Contax camera mailing list, they have (Contax) in 
> front of each email coming into my mail box. So is Lug, 
> Hassy..., it seems our IR mailing list is the only one
> which doesn't contain our own "title". I guess it won't 
> be a difficult job to add one like (IR), is it?

With all respect, adding such prefixes to the subject header is the 
worst possible solution for managing listmail.
It either shows that you currently don't use any mailfiltering at 
all, or filter only on subject.
While at the same time such a prefix means less meaningfull 
characters in the subject line for those that do know how to filter.

Managing mail from several lists is *much* easier if you a) use
separate mailfolders for each different mailinglist, and b) filter
on the 'Reply-To:' line (applies to most lists, otherwise use 'To:').
That way, a subject-prefix is completely redundant.

Note that this might not seem that bad with [IR], but the longer the
prefix, the more annoying....currently [Kodachrome] ranks worst in
this subject-line polluting concept....that is one of the reasons I 
simply won't resort to this prefix-plague....it's putting the horse 
behind the wagon.

And yes, I know that those crappy all-in-one browsers from gates & co 
don't make filtering easy, but nobody forces you to use that 
crap....there are much better freeware mailclients out there, like 
Pegasus/WinPmail that I have been using for years.
(http://tucows.wau.nl is a good start for Net-software....it will 
point you to local mirrors too)

Add smart mail reading ("sort by subject" & "sort unread before
read", and deleting entire threads at once), and you can handle
dozens of mailinglists and several hundreds of messages each day
without problems. And still keep your normal mailbox free for private 
mail. 

So be smart and use the proper filtering techniques!....:-))




--                 
Bye,

Willem-Jan Markerink


      The desire to understand 
is sometimes far less intelligent than
     the inability to understand


<w.j.markerink@xxxxx>
[note: 'a-one' & 'en-el'!]
*
****
*******
******************************************************
*  To remove yourself from this list, send:          *
*         UNSUBSCRIBE INFRARED                       *
*       to                                           *
*         MAJORDOMO@xxxxx                            *
*----------------------------------------------------*
*   For the IR-FAQ, IR-Gallery and heaps of links:   *
*  http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/mainpage.htm  *
******************************************************