Fedora Core Support List Unofficial User's Guide (draft 2 - Duncan Lithgow))

[Carroll Grigsby]

On Tuesday 01 March 2005 08:38 am, David Hoffman wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 01:12:35 -0600, Gustavo Seabra
>
> <gustavo.seabra at 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