202212160543.AYC Re: eMail Conventions

Fri Dec 16 16:44:01 UTC 2022

>
>  Now, I would appreciate very much to see an example of how
> your eMail system handles the message threads. So that we can compare
> notes. Thanks,
>

Email *systems* don't do anything with threads. It's a construct of mail
clients. Even different mail clients do things differently, so as a rule,
it's generally best to not muck with the actual message itself that much.
Use your mail client's organizational tools as much as possible.

On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 10:06 AM Abraham Y. Chen <aychen at avinta.com> wrote:

> Dear Bill, Et al.:
>
> 0)  Ever since I signed up to the NANOG List, I have been getting
> complaints about my eMail style, format, etc. Since I could not find any
> document that clearly stated the guidelines and no one cared about
> providing an explicit lead, it has been a very frustrating experience.
> As I explained previously, my best understanding of an eMail is that it
> is an electronic equivalent of the traditional postal letter. We should
> start from following the old business correspondence protocol and then
> enhance it by taking advantage of the available electronic facility.
> Beyond that, an eMail is a literary work from an individual writer's own
> "creativity". A receiver can do anything possible about handling an
> eMail, but should refrain from imposing "rules" to the writer, unless
> there is a mutual consent. From time to time in the past, I did get
> questions from various contacts about what was I doing. Upon describing
> my rationales, most accepted them. Some even started to mimic my
> approaches. However, feedback on this List was exceptionally strong, it
> was quite distracting. Thus, I tried my best to minimize the rough
> spots, so that we could carry on the technical discussions.
>
> 1)  "On 2022-12-01 23:54, nanog wrote: ...  1) Your emails do not
> conform to the list standards (changing subject lines with every reply
> making it impossible to digest or follow.) ...   ":
>
>    The above from you was the most recent feedback that I got. It
> stirred up my curiosity on this topic again. Since I had some slack time
> during the past few days, I decided to look into the "threading". I have
> been using ThunderBird eMail client software ever since its
> introduction, but never bothered about using its Message Threads
> facility because my own subject line tagging technique seemed to be
> sufficient. After a bit of fiddling, I was able to get ThunderBird to
> display messages organized in threads. Below is one such example. 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! Now, I would appreciate very much to see an example of how
> your eMail system handles the message threads. So that we can compare
> notes. Thanks,
>
>
> Q. E. D.
>
> Happy Holidays!
>
> Abe (2022-12-16 10:04 EST)
>
> --
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>
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