[Asterisk-Users] List tips for new subscribers

[Steven Critchfield]

On Wed, 2005-02-23 at 09:05 -0800, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:
> akohlsmith-asterisk at benshaw.com (Andrew Kohlsmith) writes:
> > You did type it yourself, but you replied to a message in a thread
> > and erased everything, thus screwing up the threading.  I think
> > that's what he was referring to.
> 
> Wouldn't it be nice if the mailinglist software were hacked to enforce
> some rules?
> 
>       * reject all HTML email

Stripping of HTML and any other attachments is good. It may not solve
the users knowledge problem but it saves the list all the crap coming to
the list without losing all those messages.

>       * reject any mail with more quoted text than original text

Wouldn't catch the really annoying MUAs that don't properly quote.

>       * reject any mail that starts a totally new subject but 
>                threads to a different unrelated one.
>                eg. has references, but new subject with no "(was: oldsubject)"

Likely to backfire more often than the human test and public
acknowledgment that the user was plain lazy.

>       * reject any mail that has "re: " or the same subject line as
>                other msgs, but no references.  (This one needs to be done
>                very carefully.)

There are a few MUAs that don't properly reference or in-reply to when
replying. While I get mildly annoyed to find replies to a thread so far
away from the thread when reading, we don't want to go so far as to be
MUA snobs. Simple user adjustments would solve many more problems than
being snobbish about the MUA being used. Remember some people do not
have a choice of the MUA they use. The bigger problems can be fixed in
those MUAs by just getting the user to take notice.
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>