Empty subject

[vitamin]

There is something wrong with the forum. If people hit "PostReply" button in the top-left the subject is not being populated. Considering that we get so many clueless people here who don't even bother to see if the subject is filled we got lots of broken posts.

Alternatively can forum enforce the non-empty subject line on replies?

[jnewman]

There is something wrong with the forum. If people hit "PostReply" button in the top-left the subject is not being populated. Considering that we get so many clueless people here who don't even bother to see if the subject is filled we got lots of broken posts.

Alternatively can forum enforce the non-empty subject line on replies?

There is nothing wrong with the forum. Subjects are not required for replies. I don't see the issue here. I don't even see why this would upset you.

If you are worried about the mailing list, mail2forum will put in the subject of the thread automatically.

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:19 PM, jnewman <[email protected]> wrote:

vitamin wrote:

There is something wrong with the forum. If people hit "PostReply" button in the top-left the subject is not being populated. Considering that we get so many clueless people here who don't even bother to see if the subject is filled we got lots of broken posts.

Alternatively can forum enforce the non-empty subject line on replies?

There is nothing wrong with the forum. Subjects are not required for replies. I don't see the issue here. I don't even see why this would upset you.

If you are worried about the mailing list, mail2forum will put in the subject of the thread automatically.

Jeremy,
I've been receiving a lot of emails where all I see is a statement
from the person posting in (I assume) the forum but not quoting any of
the test that he or she is responding to. This makes it pretty much
impossible for me to say much of anything in context so I'm just
deleting these without much attention.

So far today it seems like this must be at least 50% of the traffic.

Are others seeing this also? Is anything about this caused on my end?

If this is happening because the default in the forum is to not
quote the previous part of the thread I can completely understand
that. That's the way a forum should work since you can see the post
immediately above. However if that sort of post in the forum is sent
to the email list without any context it's almost useless here I
think.

Thanks,
Mark

[jnewman]

I've been receiving a lot of emails where all I see is a statement
from the person posting in (I assume) the forum but not quoting any of
the test that he or she is responding to. This makes it pretty much
impossible for me to say much of anything in context so I'm just
deleting these without much attention.

So far today it seems like this must be at least 50% of the traffic.

Are others seeing this also? Is anything about this caused on my end?

If this is happening because the default in the forum is to not
quote the previous part of the thread I can completely understand
that. That's the way a forum should work since you can see the post
immediately above. However if that sort of post in the forum is sent
to the email list without any context it's almost useless here I
think.

This is a fundamental difference between Forums and the mailing list. In the forum, replies are always shown in ascending order by post time, so it is not necessary to quote a post above it.

Mailing list users could work around this by configuring your email client to show posts in a threaded view. Thunderbird supports this.

Ahh, the joys of merging two distinct discussion communities into one pot. Who's idea was this again?

[James Hawkins]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 3:48 PM, jnewman <[email protected]> wrote:

Mark Knecht wrote:

I've been receiving a lot of emails where all I see is a statement
from the person posting in (I assume) the forum but not quoting any of
the test that he or she is responding to. This makes it pretty much
impossible for me to say much of anything in context so I'm just
deleting these without much attention.

So far today it seems like this must be at least 50% of the traffic.

Are others seeing this also? Is anything about this caused on my end?

If this is happening because the default in the forum is to not
quote the previous part of the thread I can completely understand
that. That's the way a forum should work since you can see the post
immediately above. However if that sort of post in the forum is sent
to the email list without any context it's almost useless here I
think.

This is a fundamental difference between Forums and the mailing list. In the forum, replies are always shown in ascending order by post time, so it is not necessary to quote a post above it.

Mailing list users could work around this by configuring your email client to show posts in a threaded view. Thunderbird supports this.

Ahh, the joys of merging two distinct discussion communities into one pot. Who's idea was this again?

gmail does this with the 'conversation view', but there's something
wrong with the email headers coming from the forum. I frequently
(unless the replier is replying from the ML) receive emails with a
'Re: XYX' subject and the reply text (with no other text). I would be
fine without the quoted text that is being replied to if the emails
were linked up as a conversation, but that doesn't happen. I'm not
familiar with all of this, so I don't know the root of the problem.

--
James Hawkins

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:48 PM, jnewman <[email protected]> wrote:

Mark Knecht wrote:

I've been receiving a lot of emails where all I see is a statement
from the person posting in (I assume) the forum but not quoting any of
the test that he or she is responding to. This makes it pretty much
impossible for me to say much of anything in context so I'm just
deleting these without much attention.

So far today it seems like this must be at least 50% of the traffic.

Are others seeing this also? Is anything about this caused on my end?

If this is happening because the default in the forum is to not
quote the previous part of the thread I can completely understand
that. That's the way a forum should work since you can see the post
immediately above. However if that sort of post in the forum is sent
to the email list without any context it's almost useless here I
think.

This is a fundamental difference between Forums and the mailing list. In the forum, replies are always shown in ascending order by post time, so it is not necessary to quote a post above it.

Mailing list users could work around this by configuring your email client to show posts in a threaded view. Thunderbird supports this.

GMail is threaded by default so that much is more or less in place
here already. However when a newbie from the forums sends a one liner
with no context it's difficult to know what he's talking about,
especially if I haven't saved the email thread. think about someone
responding to a forum thread that's been quiet for months.

I'm going down a path here of trying to learn more about Wine so that
I can help out a bit. I offered to help with Dan's wine-newbies list
idea but if that doesn't happen I'll still try to help out as I can.
However it's pretty hard the way things are working right now. I think
I answered someone's post this morning, presumably from the forums,
and got a response beck from him that sounded like I'd done something
wrong because I hadn't read the forum thread.

One idea I have would be that in emails originated IN THE FORUM ONLY
to automatically add an HTML link pointing readers on this list back
to the forum thread. That way we'd have an easy way to get into the
forum thread if we chose to and it would only be one line in the email
we receive. It could be something like a context sensitive signature
added to the email by the forum software. If the software can do that
then no person has to do anything and at least we can link the two
together better. Just an idea.

Ahh, the joys of merging two distinct discussion communities into one pot. Who's idea was this again?

I don't remember...

Cheers,
Mark

[David Gerard]

On 26/03/2008, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote:

One idea I have would be that in emails originated IN THE FORUM ONLY
to automatically add an HTML link pointing readers on this list back
to the forum thread. That way we'd have an easy way to get into the
forum thread if we chose to and it would only be one line in the email
we receive. It could be something like a context sensitive signature
added to the email by the forum software. If the software can do that
then no person has to do anything and at least we can link the two
together better. Just an idea.

Another: please disable post-editing.


- d.

[Dan Kegel]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:19 PM, jnewman <[email protected]> wrote:

There is nothing wrong with the forum. Subjects are not required for replies. I don't see the issue here. I don't even see why this would upset you.

If you are worried about the mailing list, mail2forum will put in the subject of the thread automatically.

I've been considering suggesting disallowing editing
the subject in the forum, since forum users seem
to be editing or clearing it accidentally, leading
to very confusing split threads on the mailing list.

My mail client is gmail, and it's usually pretty good about
threading, but maybe that's an illusion, and all it
does is match subject lines...

[austin987]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 4:38 PM, Dan Kegel <[email protected]> wrote:

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:19 PM, jnewman <[email protected]> wrote:

There is nothing wrong with the forum. Subjects are not required for replies. I don't see the issue here. I don't even see why this would upset you.

If you are worried about the mailing list, mail2forum will put in the subject of the thread automatically.

I've been considering suggesting disallowing editing
the subject in the forum, since forum users seem
to be editing or clearing it accidentally, leading
to very confusing split threads on the mailing list.

My mail client is gmail, and it's usually pretty good about
threading, but maybe that's an illusion, and all it
does is match subject lines...

I sent Jeremy a PM about this yesterday, he said he changed it to
where edits can be made on the forum, but they are not sent to the ML.
There shouldn't have been any today (I think we should disable them
entirely, else someone may edit post on the forum, and ML won't see
it).

[David Gerard]

On 26/03/2008, Austin English <[email protected]> wrote:

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 4:38 PM, Dan Kegel <[email protected]> wrote:

I've been considering suggesting disallowing editing
the subject in the forum, since forum users seem
to be editing or clearing it accidentally, leading
to very confusing split threads on the mailing list.

I sent Jeremy a PM about this yesterday, he said he changed it to
where edits can be made on the forum, but they are not sent to the ML.
There shouldn't have been any today (I think we should disable them
entirely, else someone may edit post on the forum, and ML won't see
it).

Yes, and this led to Dan not realising someone had post-edited an
earlier reply, the post-editing not reaching the mailing list ...


- d.

[L. Rahyen]

On Wednesday March 26 2008 21:43:43 Austin English wrote:

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 4:38 PM, Dan Kegel <[email protected]> wrote:

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:19 PM, jnewman <[email protected]>

wrote:

There is nothing wrong with the forum. Subjects are not required for
replies. I don't see the issue here. I don't even see why this would
upset you.

If you are worried about the mailing list, mail2forum will put in the
subject of the thread automatically.

I've been considering suggesting disallowing editing
the subject in the forum, since forum users seem
to be editing or clearing it accidentally, leading
to very confusing split threads on the mailing list.

My mail client is gmail, and it's usually pretty good about
threading, but maybe that's an illusion, and all it
does is match subject lines...

I sent Jeremy a PM about this yesterday, he said he changed it to
where edits can be made on the forum, but they are not sent to the ML.

I don't think this is good idea. There is only two proper solutions:

1) Enable post editing by users and send edited posts to ML (recently this
was the case).
2) Disable post editing by users.

Enabling editing without sending edited posts to ML is really bad idea
because all users on ML (and even some forum moderators who prefer ML) will
don't know about some changes made by forum users - this is very confusing.
Forum users who edit posts expect that everyone will see newest version of
their messages. So we either should choose solution #1 or #2. Personally I
prefer #2.

(I think we should disable them entirely, else someone may edit post on the

forum, and ML won't see it).

Yes, I agree.

[vitamin]

If you are worried about the mailing list, mail2forum will put in the subject of the thread automatically.

Yes that is what I was worried about. Thanks for clarifying it.

[Paul Johnson]

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On Wednesday 26 March 2008 02:38:27 pm Dan Kegel wrote:

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:19 PM, jnewman <[email protected]> wrote:

There is nothing wrong with the forum. Subjects are not required for
replies. I don't see the issue here. I don't even see why this would
upset you.

If you are worried about the mailing list, mail2forum will put in the
subject of the thread automatically.

I've been considering suggesting disallowing editing
the subject in the forum, since forum users seem
to be editing or clearing it accidentally, leading
to very confusing split threads on the mailing list.

On the mailing list, threading is not determined by the Subject header, but by
the References header.

I'm not sure what's causing references to break; sometimes just the last
reference is missing (causing the message to appear as a reply to the parent
message of the message it was replying to), sometimes it's entirely missing
(causing a new thread). Mailing list posts are threading correctly; posts
coming off forum2mail are getting mangled.

My mail client is gmail, and it's usually pretty good about
threading, but maybe that's an illusion, and all it
does is match subject lines...

My experience using gmail for domains before is that gmail threads based on
References and ignores Subject just like it's supposed to; the broken threads
appear are a case of Garbage In, Garbage Out in this case.

- --
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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[Paul Johnson]

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On Wednesday 26 March 2008 02:43:43 pm Austin English wrote:

I sent Jeremy a PM about this yesterday, he said he changed it to
where edits can be made on the forum, but they are not sent to the ML.

For consistency's sake, perhaps forum posts should be made non-editable? It's
not like you can edit email once it's sent...

- --
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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[Paul Johnson]

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On Wednesday 26 March 2008 01:48:40 pm jnewman wrote:

This is a fundamental difference between Forums and the mailing list. In
the forum, replies are always shown in ascending order by post time, so it
is not necessary to quote a post above it.

It would probably be a good idea to enable quoting and remind forum users of
proper quoting practices at least in the short term until a more permanent
solution can be made. [1]

Mailing list users could work around this by configuring your email client
to show posts in a threaded view. Thunderbird supports this.

That would work if the References weren't broken coming from the forum.


[1] Really, conversational quoting is The Right Thing anytime asynchronous
communications are involved; you never know how the parent to your reply or
your reply will be mangled before your audience sees it. Mandatory
conversational quoting probably wouldn't hurt in the long term...

- --
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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[David Gerard]

On 26/03/2008, Paul Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:

On the mailing list, threading is not determined by the Subject header, but by
the References header.

[...]

My experience using gmail for domains before is that gmail threads based on
References and ignores Subject just like it's supposed to; the broken threads
appear are a case of Garbage In, Garbage Out in this case.

On the mailing list, perhaps threading *should* be determined by the
Subject: header; in practice, this is clearly not the case, to the
point where those expecting it to be berate those using other mail
clients to switch to KMail.


- d.

[David Gerard]

On 27/03/2008, David Gerard <[email protected]> wrote:

On the mailing list, perhaps threading *should* be determined by the
Subject: header; in practice, this is clearly not the case, to the
point where those expecting it to be berate those using other mail
clients to switch to KMail.

I meant of course References: header. (Fortunately, I post-edited my
message to say so. Go back and see!)


- d.

[Paul Johnson]

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On Wednesday 26 March 2008 05:18:12 pm David Gerard wrote:

On 26/03/2008, Paul Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:

On the mailing list, threading is not determined by the Subject header,
but by the References header.

[...]

My experience using gmail for domains before is that gmail threads based
on References and ignores Subject just like it's supposed to; the broken
threads appear are a case of Garbage In, Garbage Out in this case.

On the mailing list, perhaps threading *should* be determined by the
Subject: header; in practice, this is clearly not the case, to the
point where those expecting it to be berate those using other mail
clients to switch to KMail.

I'm using KMail and I have thread-by-subject turned on, though it's not making
a huge difference other than catching a couple subthreads parented by a reply
with broken References to another thread.

- --
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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