need for new list?

[Roy Tennant]

On Tue, 10 Mar 1998, David P. Miller wrote:

> Really, truly, what is wrong with designating technical topics in the
> subject line?

OK, I feel like I owe it to the Web4Lib community to give this idea a try
and see how we like it. Please bear with me, as I don't think there is any
perfect way to do it. Here is what I suggest, and I am open to other
ideas.

I propose that whenever a posting has a clearly definable topic, that the
most specific term you can imagine be placed in the front of your subject
in all caps followed by a colon. Thus, a message relating to a Perl
programming problem would look like this: 

PERL: How do I do a redirect?

I do not think it will work to create a list of authorized subject
prefaces, for two reasons. The first and most compelling is that we cannot
expect everyone to either remember the list or remember where to find it.
The number of "how do I get off this list" questions posted to the list
is enough proof of that. Second, things change so quickly that we could
spend a good deal of time managing the list of approved subject prefaces.

I plan to start testing this out momentarily, and I urge you all to as
well. That way we can find out if this is going to work or not. Thanks,
Roy Tennant
Web4Lib Owner