202212160543.AYC Re: eMail Conventions
Dear Bill, Et al.: 0) Ever since I signed up to the NANOG List, I have been getting complaints about my eMail style, format, etc. Since I could not find any document that clearly stated the guidelines and no one cared about providing an explicit lead, it has been a very frustrating experience. As I explained previously, my best understanding of an eMail is that it is an electronic equivalent of the traditional postal letter. We should start from following the old business correspondence protocol and then enhance it by taking advantage of the available electronic facility. Beyond that, an eMail is a literary work from an individual writer's own "creativity". A receiver can do anything possible about handling an eMail, but should refrain from imposing "rules" to the writer, unless there is a mutual consent. From time to time in the past, I did get questions from various contacts about what was I doing. Upon describing my rationales, most accepted them. Some even started to mimic my approaches. However, feedback on this List was exceptionally strong, it was quite distracting. Thus, I tried my best to minimize the rough spots, so that we could carry on the technical discussions. 1) "On 2022-12-01 23:54, nanog wrote: ... 1) Your emails do not conform to the list standards (changing subject lines with every reply making it impossible to digest or follow.) ... ": The above from you was the most recent feedback that I got. It stirred up my curiosity on this topic again. Since I had some slack time during the past few days, I decided to look into the "threading". I have been using ThunderBird eMail client software ever since its introduction, but never bothered about using its Message Threads facility because my own subject line tagging technique seemed to be sufficient. After a bit of fiddling, I was able to get ThunderBird to display messages organized in threads. Below is one such example. As you can see, my practice of continuously prefixing timestamps to the "Subject" line of messages in a thread seems to conform to ThunderBird's mechanism! Now, I would appreciate very much to see an example of how your eMail system handles the message threads. So that we can compare notes. Thanks, Q. E. D. Happy Holidays! Abe (2022-12-16 10:04 EST) -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com
Abe, Since you ask, and it's coffee time on a Friday, I'll chip in. This is not an invitation for an extended conversation; take or leave what I say below as you wish, but note my remark at the end. The only other general remark I'd make is observe what others do; these are the usual norms for email conversations that you should probably adopt for friction-free discussion.
As you can see, my practice of continuously prefixing timestamps to the "Subject" line of messages in a thread seems to conform to ThunderBird's mechanism!
I don't know about Thunderbird; but this is one of the things that you do that likely irks people. Your message already carries a Date: field added to it by your email system when you compose and send (and displayed to recipients), you don't need to put another date in the Subject. By changing the subject each time you respond to a point in the discussion, you mess up the threading that some other mail readers use -- they often rely on the Subject being, modulo a few accepted changes, the same for each related message -- although there are techniques other than relying just on Subject: too. Just hit "reply" and type your response to someone's comments, perhaps appropriately quoting the direct points you are responding to (that's a whole other topic). By messing with threading, you also make it very hard for people to look back on the list archives and read the totality of the discussion as historical record, which, if you're proposing changes to the operation of the Internet and its addressing, they may wish to do. You don't need to put your initials there either. We know it's from you. The email system adds a From: header with your name and displays that to recipients. If you use (e.g.) "202212160543.AYC" as some sort of 'letter reference' for your own purposes, I'd suggest just stating that in the body of the message, maybe at the bottom out of the way, rather than butchering the Subject: field. You don't need to add "(2022-12-16 10:04 EST)" and similar after your name signature. The sending time and timezone are all stored in the message automatically when you send it. No-one receiving it cares that you might have written it at 10.04 and sent it a minute or an hour later.
my best understanding of an eMail is that it is an electronic equivalent of the traditional postal letter.
Not so much. And anyway, because it's on a computer, the computer can automatically do things for you that you used to have to do manually. Like adding the date and your name. It's your own time you are wasting adding these things, but the more you irk people (and it doesn't take much), the less likely they are to engage with what you are trying to communicate and so the chances of you progressing your case diminish. Jethro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jethro R Binks, Network Manager, Information Services Directorate, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, number SC015263. ________________________________ From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+jethro.binks=strath.ac.uk@nanog.org> on behalf of Abraham Y. Chen <aychen@avinta.com> Sent: 16 December 2022 15:05 To: nanog <nanog@wjp.net> Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>; Chen, Abraham Y. <AYChen@alum.MIT.edu> Subject: 202212160543.AYC Re: eMail Conventions Dear Bill, Et al.: 0) Ever since I signed up to the NANOG List, I have been getting complaints about my eMail style, format, etc. Since I could not find any document that clearly stated the guidelines and no one cared about providing an explicit lead, it has been a very frustrating experience. As I explained previously, my best understanding of an eMail is that it is an electronic equivalent of the traditional postal letter. We should start from following the old business correspondence protocol and then enhance it by taking advantage of the available electronic facility. Beyond that, an eMail is a literary work from an individual writer's own "creativity". A receiver can do anything possible about handling an eMail, but should refrain from imposing "rules" to the writer, unless there is a mutual consent. From time to time in the past, I did get questions from various contacts about what was I doing. Upon describing my rationales, most accepted them. Some even started to mimic my approaches. However, feedback on this List was exceptionally strong, it was quite distracting. Thus, I tried my best to minimize the rough spots, so that we could carry on the technical discussions. 1) "On 2022-12-01 23:54, nanog wrote: ... 1) Your emails do not conform to the list standards (changing subject lines with every reply making it impossible to digest or follow.) ... ": The above from you was the most recent feedback that I got. It stirred up my curiosity on this topic again. Since I had some slack time during the past few days, I decided to look into the "threading". I have been using ThunderBird eMail client software ever since its introduction, but never bothered about using its Message Threads facility because my own subject line tagging technique seemed to be sufficient. After a bit of fiddling, I was able to get ThunderBird to display messages organized in threads. Below is one such example. As you can see, my practice of continuously prefixing timestamps to the "Subject" line of messages in a thread seems to conform to ThunderBird's mechanism! Now, I would appreciate very much to see an example of how your eMail system handles the message threads. So that we can compare notes. Thanks, Q. E. D. Happy Holidays! Abe (2022-12-16 10:04 EST) -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com<http://www.avast.com>
If you are running thunderbird, all you need to do is hit Reply and respond accordingly, maybe trimming off some extra fluff at the end of the quoted message. The defaults in Thunderbird are pretty ‘normal’ in terms of what the bulk of the world expects a message reply to be. It handles quoting, adding the Re to the title, etc. Your strange way of responding by purposely changing the subject and adding a time stamp, and no quoting or indication of the original message (ie ‘On X date at X time, Joe Smith wrote…’) with ‘1)’ is just excessive and designed to draw out the process needlessly. Just use the standard Thunderbird reply function, hit Reply, and go! I once told a drama queen (using her own words), “Don’t tell me that you feel like you are on a journey with Ewoks to the fires of the molten core of andor or that your mind is drowning in excruciating sensory overload like what happened one evening 15 years ago when only you were present. Just say, ‘my hand is numb’ and stop wasting 10 minutes of my time for what takes 4 words to say.” This isn’t the place to do your artistic flowery email bullshit. We talk tech here. There’s two common no BS ways to respond. Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 16, 2022, at 8:06 AM, Abraham Y. Chen <aychen@avinta.com> wrote:
Dear Bill, Et al.:
0) Ever since I signed up to the NANOG List, I have been getting complaints about my eMail style, format, etc. Since I could not find any document that clearly stated the guidelines and no one cared about providing an explicit lead, it has been a very frustrating experience. As I explained previously, my best understanding of an eMail is that it is an electronic equivalent of the traditional postal letter. We should start from following the old business correspondence protocol and then enhance it by taking advantage of the available electronic facility. Beyond that, an eMail is a literary work from an individual writer's own "creativity". A receiver can do anything possible about handling an eMail, but should refrain from imposing "rules" to the writer, unless there is a mutual consent. From time to time in the past, I did get questions from various contacts about what was I doing. Upon describing my rationales, most accepted them. Some even started to mimic my approaches. However, feedback on this List was exceptionally strong, it was quite distracting. Thus, I tried my best to minimize the rough spots, so that we could carry on the technical discussions.
1) "On 2022-12-01 23:54, nanog wrote: ... 1) Your emails do not conform to the list standards (changing subject lines with every reply making it impossible to digest or follow.) ... ":
The above from you was the most recent feedback that I got. It stirred up my curiosity on this topic again. Since I had some slack time during the past few days, I decided to look into the "threading". I have been using ThunderBird eMail client software ever since its introduction, but never bothered about using its Message Threads facility because my own subject line tagging technique seemed to be sufficient. After a bit of fiddling, I was able to get ThunderBird to display messages organized in threads. Below is one such example. As you can see, my practice of continuously prefixing timestamps to the "Subject" line of messages in a thread seems to conform to ThunderBird's mechanism! Now, I would appreciate very much to see an example of how your eMail system handles the message threads. So that we can compare notes. Thanks,
Q. E. D.
Happy Holidays!
Abe (2022-12-16 10:04 EST)
-- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com
Hello Abe, Actually there is a RFC describing Netiquette Guidelines from 1995 (rfc 1855), with guidelines still valid today. See https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1855 Best regards, Pim van Stam
On 16 Dec 2022, at 16:05, Abraham Y. Chen <aychen@avinta.com> wrote:
Dear Bill, Et al.:
0) Ever since I signed up to the NANOG List, I have been getting complaints about my eMail style, format, etc. Since I could not find any document that clearly stated the guidelines and no one cared about providing an explicit lead, it has been a very frustrating experience. As I explained previously, my best understanding of an eMail is that it is an electronic equivalent of the traditional postal letter. We should start from following the old business correspondence protocol and then enhance it by taking advantage of the available electronic facility. Beyond that, an eMail is a literary work from an individual writer's own "creativity". A receiver can do anything possible about handling an eMail, but should refrain from imposing "rules" to the writer, unless there is a mutual consent. From time to time in the past, I did get questions from various contacts about what was I doing. Upon describing my rationales, most accepted them. Some even started to mimic my approaches. However, feedback on this List was exceptionally strong, it was quite distracting. Thus, I tried my best to minimize the rough spots, so that we could carry on the technical discussions.
1) "On 2022-12-01 23:54, nanog wrote: ... 1) Your emails do not conform to the list standards (changing subject lines with every reply making it impossible to digest or follow.) ... ":
The above from you was the most recent feedback that I got. It stirred up my curiosity on this topic again. Since I had some slack time during the past few days, I decided to look into the "threading". I have been using ThunderBird eMail client software ever since its introduction, but never bothered about using its Message Threads facility because my own subject line tagging technique seemed to be sufficient. After a bit of fiddling, I was able to get ThunderBird to display messages organized in threads. Below is one such example. As you can see, my practice of continuously prefixing timestamps to the "Subject" line of messages in a thread seems to conform to ThunderBird's mechanism! Now, I would appreciate very much to see an example of how your eMail system handles the message threads. So that we can compare notes. Thanks,
Q. E. D.
Happy Holidays!
Abe (2022-12-16 10:04 EST)
-- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com
On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 7:05 AM Abraham Y. Chen <aychen@avinta.com> wrote:
As you can see, my practice of continuously prefixing timestamps to the "Subject" line of messages in a thread seems to conform to ThunderBird's mechanism!
Ave, Most email clients assume that a change to the subject line (other than adding "Re:" to the front) indicates that the sender wants to discuss a new topic related to but meaningly different from the last. So they start a new thread for it. This is a perfectly reasonable inference. If they didn't behave this way then when folks replied to a message but started a new topic with a subject line change, the email client would intermingle the new topic messages with the old, defeating the purpose of message threading. Perhaps Thunderbird does this. I don't know. I haven't used it in many years. By adding meaningless changes to the subject line, you cause most threaded mail clients to believe that you have started a new topic when you have not. This makes a mess of their inboxes every time you go on a posting spree. Personally, I've found your email behavior so distracting that I've deleted the bulk of your email without opening it and even considered programming my mail client to delete any messages with "20.*AYC" in the subject line. I doubt I'm the only one. That's the price you pay for abusing the subject header: disruptive people get ignored. Regards, Bill Herrin -- For hire. https://bill.herrin.us/resume/
Most email clients assume that a change to the subject line (other than adding "Re:" to the front) indicates that the sender wants to discuss a new topic related to but meaningly different from the last.
When I managed a help desk, my users would constantly complain that they weren't receiving updates on their service tickets. I was able to verify that tickets were being updated and that the users were indeed receiving the e-mails ... however Outlook was sorting them into new conversations and then hiding them behind the "Focused" inbox. Sometimes you streamline your experience, other times you organize yourself into a bigger mess. K
Hi there,
On 16 Dec 2022, at 17:13, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:
Most email clients assume that a change to the subject line (other than adding "Re:" to the front) indicates that the sender wants to discuss a new topic related to but meaningly different from the last.
Although I generally agree that changing the Subject line without reason is an annoyance, I didn’t notice any issue with it until I came across this thread, which wasn’t broken in my mail client (Apple’s Mail.app). This led me to a few tests, and FWIW even Mutt seems happy with the Subject changing and still threads the emails appropriately. In my experience, threading is done by clients looking for the In-Reply-To: header, not subject. Subject is a heuristic fallback, in case In-Reply-To is absent. Some email clients (although I don’t remember which ones) remove In-Reply-To: when the Subject: is changed (that might go as far back as my Gnus Oort days). BR, ic.
On Dec 16, 2022, at 12:04 PM, ic <lists@benappy.com> wrote:
Hi there,
On 16 Dec 2022, at 17:13, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us <mailto:bill@herrin.us>> wrote:
Most email clients assume that a change to the subject line (other than adding "Re:" to the front) indicates that the sender wants to discuss a new topic related to but meaningly different from the last.
Although I generally agree that changing the Subject line without reason is an annoyance, I didn’t notice any issue with it until I came across this thread, which wasn’t broken in my mail client (Apple’s Mail.app).
As a user of Mail.app as well, it is not broken for me either. However, reason being — Mail does not use just the subject to thread. I used to nerd out about email (top + bottom posting, etc) so the details of how Apple Mail threads have been lost in my ADHD riddled brain, but — that’s why.
This led me to a few tests, and FWIW even Mutt seems happy with the Subject changing and still threads the emails appropriately.
In my experience, threading is done by clients looking for the In-Reply-To: header, not subject. Subject is a heuristic fallback, in case In-Reply-To is absent.
Some email clients (although I don’t remember which ones) remove In-Reply-To: when the Subject: is changed (that might go as far back as my Gnus Oort days).
…. and now that I wrote the above email response, I think you’re right. In-Reply-To: I believe, is how Mail.app does it. (And several others)
On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 9:05 AM ic <lists@benappy.com> wrote:
In my experience, threading is done by clients looking for the In-Reply-To: header, not subject. Subject is a heuristic fallback, in case In-Reply-To is absent.
Correct, they use the In-Reply-To and References headers to thread the emails. Subject line change is a heuristic, not for threading the emails but for -breaking- the thread. It's a good heuristic. Unless the sender is doing something asinine, changing the subject line signals their intent to start a new conversation. Regards, Bill Herrin -- For hire. https://bill.herrin.us/resume/
On 12/16/22 10:04 AM, ic wrote:
In my experience, threading is done by clients looking for the In-Reply-To: header, not subject. Subject is a heuristic fallback, in case In-Reply-To is absent.
I believe the References: header is what most clients use as well? -- Brielle Bruns The Summit Open Source Development Group http://www.sosdg.org / http://www.ahbl.org
Now, I would appreciate very much to see an example of how your eMail system handles the message threads. So that we can compare notes. Thanks,
Email *systems* don't do anything with threads. It's a construct of mail clients. Even different mail clients do things differently, so as a rule, it's generally best to not muck with the actual message itself that much. Use your mail client's organizational tools as much as possible. On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 10:06 AM Abraham Y. Chen <aychen@avinta.com> wrote:
Dear Bill, Et al.:
0) Ever since I signed up to the NANOG List, I have been getting complaints about my eMail style, format, etc. Since I could not find any document that clearly stated the guidelines and no one cared about providing an explicit lead, it has been a very frustrating experience. As I explained previously, my best understanding of an eMail is that it is an electronic equivalent of the traditional postal letter. We should start from following the old business correspondence protocol and then enhance it by taking advantage of the available electronic facility. Beyond that, an eMail is a literary work from an individual writer's own "creativity". A receiver can do anything possible about handling an eMail, but should refrain from imposing "rules" to the writer, unless there is a mutual consent. From time to time in the past, I did get questions from various contacts about what was I doing. Upon describing my rationales, most accepted them. Some even started to mimic my approaches. However, feedback on this List was exceptionally strong, it was quite distracting. Thus, I tried my best to minimize the rough spots, so that we could carry on the technical discussions.
1) "On 2022-12-01 23:54, nanog wrote: ... 1) Your emails do not conform to the list standards (changing subject lines with every reply making it impossible to digest or follow.) ... ":
The above from you was the most recent feedback that I got. It stirred up my curiosity on this topic again. Since I had some slack time during the past few days, I decided to look into the "threading". I have been using ThunderBird eMail client software ever since its introduction, but never bothered about using its Message Threads facility because my own subject line tagging technique seemed to be sufficient. After a bit of fiddling, I was able to get ThunderBird to display messages organized in threads. Below is one such example. As you can see, my practice of continuously prefixing timestamps to the "Subject" line of messages in a thread seems to conform to ThunderBird's mechanism! Now, I would appreciate very much to see an example of how your eMail system handles the message threads. So that we can compare notes. Thanks,
Q. E. D.
Happy Holidays!
Abe (2022-12-16 10:04 EST)
-- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com
participants (10)
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Abraham Y. Chen -
Brie -
Brielle
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ic -
Jethro Binks -
Joel Esler -
Kord Martin -
Pim van Stam -
Tom Beecher -
William Herrin