ADMIN: Subject header maintenance (was: Re: [Mud-Dev] Broken currencies)

[J C Lawrence]

<<CC'ed to meta -- please discuss there>>

On Tue, 3 Apr 2001 22:24:46 +0000 (GMT) 
Matt Mihaly <the_logos at www.achaea.com> wrote:

> [I've renamed this thread to something more indicative of its
> content. It was previously called Learning from MUDs.--matt]

NOT writing as list owner:

  The cannonical pattern for subject renames is:

    Subject: New subject (was: Old subject)

  It gives a little better tracking and familiarity.

Writing as list owner:

  Which in turn brings up another point.  At the MUD-Dev dinner I
  went around most of the tables (alas I missed one due to lack of
  time and bad scheduling on my part) and asked what they would like
  to see changed with MUD-Dev, and how it could be improved.

  The most common request was better Subject: header editing, and in
  particular, changing of the Subject header as the thread changes
  and/or forks.  MUD-Dev is getting large enough and has enough
  traffic that a little assistance from posters in keeping track of
  threads and keeping them relevant to their Subject: headers would
  help a lot.  In particular it would help the far too many people
  who just can't keep up with the current 20 - 30 posts a day and
  contribute as meaningfully to the list as they'd like to do.

  Two requests came out of the dinner:

    1) Edit and maintain the subject lines!

    2) Lose the [MUD-DEv] Subject tag and let us add our own tags!

  #1 I'm quite sure you can manage without my help.  And of course,
  I well recall who complained at the dinner, so I'll be expecting
  you specifically to lead the way.

  #2 is a little more interesting.  In the discussions the most
  general divides seemed to be TECH, BIZ, and DNG with the
  following (loose) definitions:

    TECH -- Anything from algorithm design down through code
    BIZ  -- The business/commercial end of the field
    DGN  -- All the rest, and in particular anything more design oriented.

  Other tags I'd like to propose enclude:

    OT   -- Off topic (yeah, it happens)
    NEWS -- Fairly obvious
    JOB  -- More obvious (if more rare)
  
  In the case of a message which straddles topic boundaries, you can
  simply apply mutiple tags:

    Subject: TECH: Distributed server models
    Subject: TECH DGN: Building neural networks for political systems
    Subject: DGN: Balancing Melee vs Ranged Combat in Games Which Model Space
    Subject: OT /archives/meow?group+ Earthquake. CA falls into sea. Moderator drowned.
    Subject: BIZ DGN: Designing around making money on EBay item auctions
    Subject: /archives/meow?group+ Beta open for EverUltiFireFurBabyMooCall!

  Don't go nuts here, and please remember to remove tags which are
  no longer appropriate.

  Note, some of you may prefer [formatting], which is also fine:

    Subject: [JOB] Boring.com is looking for a game designer.

  Generically I think this sort of Subject: tagging is a Good Idea.
  I've seen it done successful on Usenet as well as other mailing
  lists, but to do it requires you, as posters, to maintain the
  Subject: tags.

    Remember:  I'm not going to do it for you.

  Also remember that you're perfectly free to correct someone
  else's missing tags, and to, umm, remind them of that fact in your
  posting thus encouraging them to do it themselves next time.

  So, what part am I as list moderator going to play in this?

    Hopefully none.

  I have no interest in maintaining your Subject: lines or Subject:
  tags for you.  You're not only quite capable of doing it
  yourselves, you are in a much better position to do it than me.  

  So let's keep our subject lines topical and appropriately tagged.
  I've updated the list guidelines to match:

    https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev/

  Enjoy.
  
--
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
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