202212160543.AYC Re: eMail Conventions

Fri Dec 16 16:13:23 UTC 2022

On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 7:05 AM Abraham Y. Chen <aychen at avinta.com> wrote:
> As you
> can see, my practice of continuously prefixing timestamps to the
> "Subject" line of messages in a thread seems to conform to ThunderBird's
> mechanism!

Ave,

Most email clients assume that a change to the subject line (other
than adding "Re:" to the front) indicates that the sender wants to
discuss a new topic related to but meaningly different from the last.
So they start a new thread for it. This is a perfectly reasonable
inference. If they didn't behave this way then when folks replied to a
message but started a new topic with a subject line change, the email
client would intermingle the new topic messages with the old,
defeating the purpose of message threading. Perhaps Thunderbird does
this. I don't know. I haven't used it in many years.

By adding meaningless changes to the subject line, you cause most
threaded mail clients to believe that you have started a new topic
when you have not. This makes a mess of their inboxes every time you
go on a posting spree.

Personally, I've found your email behavior so distracting that I've
deleted the bulk of your email without opening it and even considered
programming my mail client to delete any messages with "20.*AYC" in
the subject line. I doubt I'm the only one. That's the price you pay
for abusing the subject header: disruptive people get ignored.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

--
For hire. https://bill.herrin.us/resume/