On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:26 AM, Glenn Glazer wrote:

I think divining intent from semantics is a perilous business, in particular when there are multiple plausible intents.

Divining intent is a perilous matter
When multiple plausible meanings exist.
Some people may just mean to clean up their chatter
But just by pure chance they make others quite pissed.

--
J

Are you riffing T.S. Eliot's The Naming of Cats? If so, I approve.

Best,

Glenn

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:26 AM, Glenn Glazer wrote:

I think divining intent from semantics is a perilous business, in particular when there are multiple plausible intents.

Divining intent is a perilous matter
When multiple plausible meanings exist.
Some people may just mean to clean up their chatter
But just by pure chance they make others quite pissed.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

I think divining intent from semantics is a perilous business, in particular when there are multiple plausible intents.

Some people may intend to start a new thread by changing the subject line.
Some people may intend to just clean up automated reply/forward annotations.
Some people may intend to acknowledge that the subject of the conversation has mutated while preserving the chain to the earlier subject (the thread has forked).
Some people may intend to just add or remove a hashtag.

None of those are more right or more wrong than the others, just different use cases. Asserting that only one of them is what all writers have in mind strikes me as not very universal.

Best,

Glenn

This has been hashed and rehashed an rerehashed in the past and the decision was made to thread topics based on subject line as well, because sometimes they were not threading correctly otherwise. I think that was the right decision and it should stay as is. This is going off on a tangent .

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 05:05 PM, Malcolm Austen wrote:

Emails are (or should be) threaded on the basis of the threading headers,
not on the basis of the subject line.

I disagree. If you change the subjectline, it's your intention to create a new thread.

Also, I don't want to copy one of the worst parts of googlegroups:
if you send a reply to a digest about subject A, and then send a reply to the same digest about subject B, the second message is threaded as subject A, and sent with the subjectline A ..

groetjes/ĝis, Ronaldo

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 08:39 AM, Thomas Gruber wrote:

That‘s not a groups.io thing really,

My point was not that it's a groups.io thing. My point was that there may have been no relationship established yet, so it doesn't seem appropriate to me to slap them on the wrist ("please don't send emails without subjects") for not including a subject, or worse yet, bounce their email.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 08:39 AM, Thomas Gruber wrote:

Or if you want to be really generous, a warning reply - like „please don‘t send emails without subject“

I think even that is too much if a relationship has not yet been established. People DO send blank emails to subscribe, unsubscribe, etc. It's not standard practice or in any way required that all emails have subject lines.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 11:05 AM, Malcolm Austen wrote:

Emails are (or should be) threaded on the basis of the threading headers...

Not always. See https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/6321

Bruce

Hi,

Given the bouncing if sent via email, I feel even more strongly that owner messages without a subject should be allowed. These are potentially coming from people completely unfamiliar with the group or even groups.io.

However, I agree that the issue of hashtags qualifying as subjects in group messages needs to be fixed.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, 23 May 2020 15:54:07 +0100, Bruce Bowman <bruce.bowman@tds.net> wrote:

Topics are supposed to have subjects. Not sure how the threading algorithm is supposed to work without one.

Emails are (or should be) threaded on the basis of the threading headers, not on the basis of the subject line.

Malcolm.

--
Malcolm Austen <malcolm.austen@weald.org.uk>

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:39 AM, Duane wrote:

Unfortunately, a hashtag on the subject line is enough to allow it to be accepted.

Yep...a source of annoyance for me.

Topics are supposed to have subjects. Not sure how the threading algorithm is supposed to work without one.

Regards,
Bruce

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 09:17 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

For those asking for clarification: It's not really that the message gets rejected in the usual sense, because it is not even allowed to be submitted without a subject.

This would be for online submissions.  If sent via email, the message is actually bounced with the message "500 This message is missing a subject. Please include a subject and send it again."  Unfortunately, a hashtag on the subject line is enough to allow it to be accepted.

Duane

For those asking for clarification: It's not really that the message gets rejected in the usual sense, because it is not even allowed to be submitted without a subject. The composition box stops you right after you hit "Send" and says "You must include a subject." right below the subject line, which lights up in red.

I also personally don't care if owner messages have subject lines or not. Well, honestly, I lean very slightly towards not requiring them.
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu