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st: RE: re: altering the subject line (sic!)


From   "Nick Cox" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   st: RE: re: altering the subject line (sic!)
Date   Tue, 7 Dec 2004 18:38:07 -0000

I've often changed the subject line. My 
intention has never been to make it 
more difficult for anyone to follow a thread, 
but always to give a more appropriate title. 

1. Dopey titles
===============

As Kit mentions, people often use dopey 
titles, usually by oversight rather than 
on purpose, although we do quite often 
get variations on "question", "learner 
question", "please help", etc., some of 
which increase the probability of deletion 
substantially. Precise, informative titles
give a signal that you are clued up and 
are striving to make things as easy as possible
for Statalist members to reply helpfully. 

2. No title at all
==================

Indeed, no title at all is also quite 
common. I can't imagine a defence of
that. 

3. Using another thread's title
=============================== 

Yet another common practice is to post 
a question by replying to someone else's 
posting on a different question but _not 
changing the title_. Again, this is presumably 
oversight and prompt changing of the title
is more helpful than leaving it be. 

4. Morphing of thread
=====================

A thread changing direction is also common. 
Enough said. 

As the present FAQ maintainer, I am open 
to further comments about this, but I'm tempted
to think this is all standard email stuff
and raises no questions specific to Statalist. 

I have only one concrete suggestion: 
whoever changes a subject line should _consider_ 
indicating that fact when they change. Suppose 
the incoming is 

question 

you might change it to 

problem with -xtreg- [was:question] 

I say _consider_ because it is possible that 
titles in this way accrete bits of past titles and 
so become inordinately long if this is followed
too zealously. 

Nick 
[email protected] 

Kit Baum
 
> Eric said
> 
> I took a quick look at the Statalist FAQ but didn't see any 
> guidance on 
> something I find mildly irritating: the practice of altering the 
> subject line.  Somehow, some people can respond to a message without 
> generating a "Re: " to the original subject.  Others take it upon 
> themselves to alter the original subject to something else, generally 
> more informative.  In either event, it makes it harder for the 
> subscriber to identify the original posting & subsequent responses.  
> Comments please.
> 
> 
> While there is an exhortation in the FAQ to ensure that informatve 
> subject lines are used, sometimes we see something like "Re: 
> Statalist-Digest vol 4 No 223". Those of us who read the 
> digest do not 
> have the automatic option of picking up the subject line, since when 
> replying we are replying to the sender of the digest rather than the 
> individual message. I try to remember to change the subject line (and 
> sometimes copy/paste in from the original message!) but in 
> other cases 
> (like this one) it seems more appropriate to change it, even though 
> that messes up threading.... It also makes the message header 
> informative, if you are only viewing a list of message headers (as in 
> the digest listing at HSPH, which I prefer to that at StataCorp).

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