On Tuesday 01 March 2005 08:38 am, David Hoffman wrote:
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 01:12:35 -0600, Gustavo Seabra
<gustavo.seabra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Another thing that may be interesting is to suggest the person who
> made the original post to, when a solution to his problem is found,
> finish the discussion with a last post adding something like [SOLVED]
> to the subject line, and indicating /what/ exactly solved the problem.
> That should help the readers to know the problem was finally solved
> without even having to read the messages; helps the monthly
> statistics; helps *a lot* when searching the archives later.
Unfortunately, changing the subject lines breaks threading. It makes
it look like an entirely new thread.
Tain't necessarily so. Changing the subject line does *not* break the thread
on real^H^H^H^Hmany mail readers. People who indulge in this practice are
commonly referred to as "hijackers". (Remember, just because Microsoft
products work that way doesn't mean that it is correct.)
The archives, news readers, and
some mail programs (gmail) can sort messages into conversations based
on the subject line. If you change the subject line, then the "Solved"
portion of the message shows up as another thread.
Again, not on real^H^H^H^Hmany mail readers. Also, you are mistaken about the
archives. Both the MARC and Redhat archives *do* preserve threads.
What might be better is to suggest NOT changing subject lines and to
know that if you happen to be looking at the archives, the end of the
thread may have a solution for you.
"may" is too indefinite. I'd rather know that the proposed solution was
indeed
effective in at least one case; [SOLVED] is good.
-- cmg