question/suggestion

[John Hawkinson]

Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org> wrote on Mon, 25 Oct 2021
at 19:00:12 EDT in <20211025230012.GC9093 at bladeshadow.org>:

> Cost?  I see no cost, other than the time needed to physically check

My Oct. 7 email, to which you replied, enumerated several costs that I perceived.
That you go on to state that you perceive no costs, without addressing the costs explicitly raised by others, makes your email seem disingenuous. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Reasonable people can disagree as to whether a particular cost is significant or not, but you seem to be doing something else.


I'm not clear if there the proposal on the floor is the initial one to add Fw:, or the subsequent one to "conform" to Gmail and Outlook by removing the email address,as well as adding Fw/Fwd. The discussion we had, such as it was, was not particularly clear aobut which of those cases it was responsive to.

To add something new without repating my prior comments: I find value in having the address of originator of the forwarded message appear in the Subject line, because it makes clear, deep into an ensuing thread, that "we're talking about [Steve]'s message." YMMV on that pro, of course, as it may with all.

> In the context of a subject line, a leading "fwd" (regardless of
> case) is very unlikely to be confused with anything else, due to
> ubiquity of the convention.

Confusion seems a red herring. No one has credibly suggested that any of the options, current or extent, proposed or in use, are confusing to anyone at all.

--
jhawk at alum.mit.edu
John Hawkinson