Re: A modest request
This request is easy enough to explain: When you want to start a thread/conversation/discussion, don't try to save time by taking an old email and clicking on reply. Doing so copies all the hidden headers of the old email into your new one, and causes some software to assume you are really replying to that conversation. Instead, open a brand new email, put in the address of the list (cut/paste, addressbook, or just plain old typing) and send the mail. The readers then see it as an independent item, and it starts its own new thread. Shimon Original message Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:00:59 -0600 From: Steve Mitchell steve.mitch...@bcbsks.com Subject: Re: A modest request To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU I’ve seen that in other mailing lists and wondered why it happened. I don’t actually know what you are talking about, though. I am going to h ave a hard time behaving in ways that you think are polite if I don’t know what it is I may be doing wrong. How is the list threading by your client? I read this list at http://listserv.uark.edu/archives/ibmvm.html. It appears to be threaded there by Subject line, with some allowance for headings such at “Re”. It occasionally splits a thread though, perhap s because of a misspelling or a trailing space. Alan Ackerman Alan (dot) Ackerman (at) Bank of America (dot) com I totally agree. I want to be a good citizen of the 'LIST', but there are parts of this discussion I've never heard of. Where do we 'learn' the proper procedure(s)? It seems someone with the proper knowledge needs to create a 'How To'. or If one exists point it out. Steve Mitchell Sr Systems Software Specialist Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas (785) 291-8885 'There are no degrees of Honesty-you're either Honest or you're not! CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email message and any attachments are for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain proprietary, confidential, trade secret or privileged information. Any unauthorized review use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited and may be a violation of law. If you are not the intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this message to an intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Re: A modest request
On Monday, 12/15/2008 at 09:38 EST, Steve Mitchell steve.mitch...@bcbsks.com wrote: So the solution to this entire 3 day discourse is: open a brand new email, put in the address of the list (cut/paste, addressbook, or just plain old typing) and send the mail. The readers then see it as an independent item, and it starts its own new thread. Yes, and I thank you and Shimon or putting such a fine point on it and bringing it (hopefully) to a close. It's a problem that has existed ever since e-mail threading was invented, what with people being people and all. Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott
Re: A modest request
I’ve seen that in other mailing lists and wondered why it happened. I don’t actually know what you are talking about, though. I am going to h ave a hard time behaving in ways that you think are polite if I don’t know what it is I may be doing wrong. How is the list threading by your client? I read this list at http://listserv.uark.edu/archives/ibmvm.html. It appears to be threaded there by Subject line, with some allowance for headings such at “Re”. It occasionally splits a thread though, perhap s because of a misspelling or a trailing space. Alan Ackerman Alan (dot) Ackerman (at) Bank of America (dot) com I totally agree. I want to be a good citizen of the 'LIST', but there are parts of this discussion I've never heard of. Where do we 'learn' the proper procedure(s)? It seems someone with the proper knowledge needs to create a 'How To'. or If one exists point it out. Steve Mitchell Sr Systems Software Specialist Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas (785) 291-8885 'There are no degrees of Honesty-you're either Honest or you're not! CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email message and any attachments are for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain proprietary, confidential, trade secret or privileged information. Any unauthorized review use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited and may be a violation of law. If you are not the intended recipient or a person responsible for delivering this message to an intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Re: A modest request
Yahoo Groups list digests are threaded -- posts are grouped by subject line. Surely LISTSERV could do the same; I'll suggest it to L-Soft (and hope it's not already there as an option I've missed). At least LISTSERV includes digests' Table of Contents; that's more than is done by whatever software runs the VSE list! Phil Smith III said: And also the opposite: folks who send a fresh note and just mimic the subject header. Probably because they use different mail agents for receiving and sending. But it forks the discussion and creates two threads with further responses landing in either thread. Annoying too. Like this one, which is that way because I get the list digested. Not = much choice then. The irony is that 99.44% of folks don't use, have never used, and have = never heard of a threaded newsreader, and don't know how it would do = such a thing other than via the Subject: (which I think is how GMail = does it? Not sure, haven't tinkered), so they don't even understand this = discussion. (Hint: It's another header, one your mail client doesn't = show you.) -- Gabriel Goldberg, Computers and Publishing, Inc. (703) 204-0433 3401 Silver Maple Place, Falls Church, VA 22042g...@gabegold.com
Re: A modest request
Rob van der Heij wrote: And also the opposite: folks who send a fresh note and just mimic the subject header. Probably because they use different mail agents for receiving and sending. But it forks the discussion and creates two threads with further responses landing in either thread. Annoying too. Like this one, which is that way because I get the list digested. Not much choice then. The irony is that 99.44% of folks don't use, have never used, and have never heard of a threaded newsreader, and don't know how it would do such a thing other than via the Subject: (which I think is how GMail does it? Not sure, haven't tinkered), so they don't even understand this discussion. (Hint: It's another header, one your mail client doesn't show you.) ...phsiii
Re: A modest request
No, GMAIL is not simply subject based. I guess it uses the Message-Id: that is part of an SMTP header. 2008/12/13 Phil Smith III li...@akphs.com Rob van der Heij wrote: And also the opposite: folks who send a fresh note and just mimic the subject header. Probably because they use different mail agents for receiving and sending. But it forks the discussion and creates two threads with further responses landing in either thread. Annoying too. Like this one, which is that way because I get the list digested. Not much choice then. The irony is that 99.44% of folks don't use, have never used, and have never heard of a threaded newsreader, and don't know how it would do such a thing other than via the Subject: (which I think is how GMail does it? Not sure, haven't tinkered), so they don't even understand this discussion. (Hint: It's another header, one your mail client doesn't show you.) ...phsiii -- Kris Buelens, IBM Belgium, VM customer support
Re: A modest request
On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Kris Buelens kris.buel...@gmail.com wrote: No, GMAIL is not simply subject based. I guess it uses the Message-Id: that is part of an SMTP header. I believe the idea was that it would use the text search algorithms to build threads. But they sure also use the In-Reply-To: header that most MTA's use. Hey, even Outlook Express has an option to view the mail threaded (which I don't use because it often makes me miss things). The approach of digested mailing list would not work for me. That limits threading (if any) to messages that arrived on the same day. And for busy lists the digest the amount of text is beyond the threshold of what you can just do in between. Indeed gmail is threaded by nature, which helps to reduce the number of entries in your mailbox. When you are reading a thread and decide you just don't care about the rest, you can either archive the current thread (and any new mail on that thread will bring the entire thread back in your inbasket) or you mute it to even avoid it show up when more mails arrive on it. And I really like the embarrassment prevention when you reply to a thread. It shows a little indicator at the bottom that a reply from Alan (or someone else) just got in so you can peek at that and decide to take out some of your response because it has been said already (yes David, such a feature exists) or decide to discard your reply completely. To me the gmail user interface works like a mail agent should work. I find that I am much more productive this way. And if you're willing to pay for it, I think you can even get it without the advertising that normally pays your service. And strange enough, I think that the approach to simply keep all you mail actually saves storage space... Rob
Re: A modest request
Chip Davis wrote: I suspect most folks are unaware of this issue. It really should be added to the listserver netiquette guide along with trim your quotes, avoid long siglines, and never annoy Chuckie (I'm sure that one's in there; if not it should be added too. :-) DO NOT HIJACK A THREAD is a part of listserver netiquette. It has been for almost as long as their have been lists and threads. But some people are so selfish that they don't bother to use netiquette. I try never to reply to hijackers. -- Stephen Frazier Information Technology Unit Oklahoma Department of Corrections 3400 Martin Luther King Oklahoma City, Ok, 73111-4298 Tel.: (405) 425-2549 Fax: (405) 425-2554 Pager: (405) 690-1828 email: stevef%doc.state.ok.us
A modest request
This is a minor problem in the overall scheme of things but I have noticed it occurring with greater frequency lately. It appears that sometimes members of a discussion list will initiate a new topic by simply replying to a recent posting and changing the 'Subject:' line. This is a handy shortcut to avoid entering a 'To:' line. Unfortunately for those of us who get and archive massive amounts of discussion list postings, this reply will appear to be a strand of the original discussion thread, despite the different 'Subject:' line. And that totally screws up the poor topic threader on mail clients sophisticated enough to have one. The result is that such topic threads are now totally invisible when viewed in a threaded mail reader or file manager. And yes, I know that listserver archives are available but I do a lot of my work with custom Rexx tools on a local archive, or while offline. (Right now, I'm in a camper outside of a helicopter factory in rural north Florida. Dial-up's what I got, wi-fi's merely a dream.) I suspect most folks are unaware of this issue. It really should be added to the listserver netiquette guide along with trim your quotes, avoid long siglines, and never annoy Chuckie (I'm sure that one's in there; if not it should be added too. :-) Thanks for your cooperations, and we now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion. -Chip Davis-
Re: A modest request
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 4:18 AM, Chip Davis c...@aresti.com wrote: It appears that sometimes members of a discussion list will initiate a new topic by simply replying to a recent posting and changing the 'Subject:' line. This is a handy shortcut to avoid entering a 'To:' line. And also the opposite: folks who send a fresh note and just mimic the subject header. Probably because they use different mail agents for receiving and sending. But it forks the discussion and creates two threads with further responses landing in either thread. Annoying too. My experience is that gmail works very well for subscribing to mailing lists. It give much control over what you send (so you don't send HTML transcripts of it). It's very handy to find things again and avoids wasting time trying to file or save important things. Since the mailing lists are public anyway, privacy issues are less important. But yes, I also know some are not allowed to use it at the office :-( Rob
