Tagging email subject line with something like [fbsd-questions]

Alex Zbyslaw xfb52 at dial.pipex.com
Wed Apr 25 13:53:43 UTC 2007


Amarendra Godbole wrote:

> I subscribe to many fbsd lists through gmail, and am not able to
> visually detect which email was sent to which fbsd list. Is it
> possible to add a tag in the subject line, something like, [fbsd-q],
> or [fbsd-questions], or similar so that emails can be visually
> classified?
>
> Given that these lists have been around for a long time, was there a
> discussion on this? If the idea of tagging was dropped, can someone
> inform me about the rationale behind this decision? Thanks in advance!

All messages are already tagged with a List-ID

e.g.

List-Id: User questions <freebsd-questions.freebsd.org>

Can gmail not filter on that?

Visual tagging of subject lines is a poor solution.  Either you tag at 
the front

   "[fbsd-questions]  Really long subject line that gets truncated even 
earlier thanks to the tag"

or at the end

  "Really long subject line where the tag disappears in a haze of ... 
[fbsd-questions]"

Neither of which is satisfactory, and for most people with sensible 
email environments that can filter of Header lines, an unnecessary 
inconvenience.

Not to mention the question of how on earth you co-ordinate unique tags 
across mailing lists.  Since the List-ID isn't constrained by length it 
can contain the email address of the list, which is already unique.

If you can't filter on the List-ID then filter on To and Cc lines which 
contain questions at freebsd.org or freebsd-questions at freebsd.org.  Not as 
good, but it would do.

--Alex




More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list