Web4Lib Admin: Re: need for new list?

[Thomas Dowling]

We might be able to do serious damage to two birds with one stone.  If we
can convince a substantial number of posters to preface their subject lines,
we might also be able to alleviate the problem of W4L messages showing only
"Multiple Recipients of List" in its To: line.

I suspect a review of the archive would suggest at least a couple of topical
breakdowns.  Combine those with the name Web4Lib in the subject line and you
can sort, filter (or delete) based on the fact that a message is a W4L post
and that it falls within a given topic.

I also suspect it could be dangerous to ask this group to come up with a
controlled vocabulary for subject areas... :-)  I humbly offer "Admin" for
posts involving management of the list itself.

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Roy Tennant <rtennant at library.berkeley.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tuesday, March 10, 1998 11:12 AM
Subject: Re: need for new list?


>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
>
>