In last week's column about hybrid Web/e-mail groupware, I mentioned that one of the fatal flaws of mailing-list-based discussion is the dreaded re: syndrome. It's the unfortunate result of the conflation, in the e-mail realm, of two contradictory uses of the crucial Subject: header:
to entitle a message
to relate a message to its surrounding context
You see the effects of this everywhere -- in your own inbox, and on countless mailing lists. Here, for example, is a snapshot of the ZopeDev list:
Fig 1: A snapshot of the Zope-Dev list.
What's wrong with this picture? I can best illustrate by counter-example. Here's how I'd prefer to view this thread:
In this volume of Best of BYTE, we explore the emergence of some heuristic algorithms. Although we have only scratched the surface of this intriguing subject, we hope we've suggested the potential of the synthesis of heuristics and algorithms.
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