OFFTOPIC Re: [Mailman-Users] Archive URL in postings (2.1b3)

[John Buttery]

* Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui at plaidworks.com> [2002-10-29 12:08:28 -0800]:
> Now we start getting into heavy philosophical issues about all this. 
> Which means there are likely no "right" answers in an objective sense. 
> I say that up front, just in case. I want folks to know I'm not arguing 
> "I'm right", but "this is how I think it ought to be". Maybe a minor 
> semantical shift, but a key one, IMHO.

  I told you it was philosophical!  :p

> then why don't you care what the person put in the subject line? 
> addresses are -- addresses. The subject line is the author's own 
> thought on the piece of email. But it's okay to play with that, but not 
> standardize the look of the addresses? To/cc/bcc is really an 
> artificial construct in the email world, anyway, a hangover from the 
> paper days. The subject line is the author's knock on your front door.

  I think his point is that the specific type of Subject:-munging
happening here doesn't destroy information; the entire original subject
is there for perusal, it's just been moved over 15 characters or so.  An
enterprising procmail user could surgically remove it and restore the
message to its original state.  However, with the To/CC modifications,
you're making changes that are impossible to back out.  Someone put it a
lot better than I did, a few messages back, when they said (paraphrasing
here) "those headers aren't standard, and that's the point...they're put
there in a particular way by the sender of the message, and I want to
know what that way was when I get it, because there is a form of content
[albeit meta-content :p -- Ed.] in them".  Putting it that way really
rang true for me, because that's IT...even if the user (who sends the
mail) _does_ do something that hoses up my filters, then that's what I
want to know...not have the MLM correct it for me.

-- 
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 John Buttery
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