Subject lines are things you put on the top of your email so that the recipient knows what the email is about, when they see it in a list. They are useful.
It's unfortunate then, that the last 10 threads on wikimedia-tech (as sorted by my mail client) had no meaningful subject line.
May I suggest changing the subject when you reply to a mediawiki-cvs post, to something somehow related to the feature or bug in question?
We manage to pick a meaningful commit message when we commit these revisions, so surely there's no reason why we can't pick a meaningful subject when we're talking about them.
-- Tim starling
On 04/06/2008, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Subject lines are things you put on the top of your email so that the recipient knows what the email is about, when they see it in a list. They are useful.
It's unfortunate then, that the last 10 threads on wikimedia-tech (as sorted by my mail client) had no meaningful subject line.
May I suggest changing the subject when you reply to a mediawiki-cvs post, to something somehow related to the feature or bug in question?
We manage to pick a meaningful commit message when we commit these revisions, so surely there's no reason why we can't pick a meaningful subject when we're talking about them.
Could the automated emails put the commit message (truncated if necessary) as the subject line? Would be more useful than saying what was modified, since as long as someone remembers to update the revision notes, you just get that phase3 was modified and no more detail. Changing subject lines when you reply doesn't help when you use a client that collapses threads to a single line with just the first subject line (such as gmail) - you can't see that the subject line has changed. Either that, or you break the thread, which is equally annoying.
On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 12:37:11PM +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote:
detail. Changing subject lines when you reply doesn't help when you use a client that collapses threads to a single line with just the first subject line (such as gmail) - you can't see that the subject line has changed. Either that, or you break the thread, which is equally annoying.
Gmail is stupid.
Any Mail User Agent that breaks threading on subject line changes is equally stupid.
We've had a *reliable* way to thread email for 2 decades now; it's called In-Reply-To. Works nice.
Cheers, -- jra
Ya, though it would be nice if people stop using the reply button to start a new mail. I see a number of threads in the lists where the thread ends up hidden inside of another thread when I collapse it.
Though, I don't know about changing the subject line of replies to the commit mails. I actually kind of like that. Seeing the way that kind of e-mail subject line is formatted instantly identifies to me that the thread is about a commit. Which identifies it as a completely different topic than any of the variety of mails in the lists.
~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of: -The Nadir-Point Group (http://nadir-point.com) --It's Wiki-Tools subgroup (http://wiki-tools.com) --Games-G.P.S. (http://ggps.org) -And Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG)
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 12:37:11PM +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote:
detail. Changing subject lines when you reply doesn't help when you use a client that collapses threads to a single line with just the first subject line (such as gmail) - you can't see that the subject line has changed. Either that, or you break the thread, which is equally annoying.
Gmail is stupid.
Any Mail User Agent that breaks threading on subject line changes is equally stupid.
We've had a *reliable* way to thread email for 2 decades now; it's called In-Reply-To. Works nice.
Cheers, -- jra
On 04/06/2008, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 12:37:11PM +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote:
detail. Changing subject lines when you reply doesn't help when you use a client that collapses threads to a single line with just the first subject line (such as gmail) - you can't see that the subject line has changed. Either that, or you break the thread, which is equally annoying.
Gmail is stupid.
Any Mail User Agent that breaks threading on subject line changes is equally stupid.
We've had a *reliable* way to thread email for 2 decades now; it's called In-Reply-To. Works nice.
Yes, and that's how gmail does it, which means changing the subject line usually has no effect (only one subject is shown for the whole thread, and that's the original one). It only has an effect if the mail client sending the email is broken and thus breaks the thread.
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 7:37 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Could the automated emails put the commit message (truncated if necessary) as the subject line? Would be more useful than saying what was modified, since as long as someone remembers to update the revision notes, you just get that phase3 was modified and no more detail.
Except if it's an extension. I find the path *extremely* useful for filtering out masses of commits to extensions I don't know or care about.
Changing subject lines when you reply doesn't help when you use a client that collapses threads to a single line with just the first subject line (such as gmail) - you can't see that the subject line has changed. Either that, or you break the thread, which is equally annoying.
Yeah, for me on Gmail (subscribed to the commit list as well as wikitech) the current way is actually pretty good. It has the drawback that I don't necessarily notice replies to a commit when paging through my mail, but on the other hand the commit is right there for me to look over.
Yeah, for me on Gmail (subscribed to the commit list as well as wikitech) the current way is actually pretty good. It has the drawback that I don't necessarily notice replies to a commit when paging through my mail, but on the other hand the commit is right there for me to look over.
Yeah, I find it works well, too. I generally notice when there's a reply, although it is easy to miss if you're scanning quickly through the list.
Simetrical schreef:
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 7:37 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Could the automated emails put the commit message (truncated if necessary) as the subject line? Would be more useful than saying what was modified, since as long as someone remembers to update the revision notes, you just get that phase3 was modified and no more detail.
Except if it's an extension. I find the path *extremely* useful for filtering out masses of commits to extensions I don't know or care about.
Maybe we could change the format of the subject lines a little? Right now we have
[MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [12345] path/to/changes
how about:
[MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [12345] path/to/changes by Catrope
(so you can at least identify whether someone's replying to your commit)
or:
[MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [12345] path/to/changes (bug 12345) action=parse used to throw...
(so you have some indication of what the commit was about)
or of course a combination of the two.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 2:39 PM, Roan Kattouw roan.kattouw@home.nl wrote:
Maybe we could change the format of the subject lines a little? Right now we have
[MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [12345] path/to/changes
how about:
[MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [12345] path/to/changes by Catrope
(so you can at least identify whether someone's replying to your commit)
or:
[MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [12345] path/to/changes (bug 12345) action=parse used to throw...
It would seem most sensible to drop "SVN:" (what purpose does it serve? distinguishing SVN commits from years-old CVS commits?) and move the path to the end:
[MediaWiki-CVS] [12345] (bug 12345) action=parse used to throw... [path/to/changes]
Maybe with the committer's name thrown in.
Simetrical wrote:
It would seem most sensible to drop "SVN:" (what purpose does it serve? distinguishing SVN commits from years-old CVS commits?) and move the path to the end:
[MediaWiki-CVS] [12345] (bug 12345) action=parse used to throw... [path/to/changes]
Maybe with the committer's name thrown in.
Well, i think it's more sensible to drop the (legacy) list name: SVN [12345] (bug 12345) action=parse used to throw... [path/to/changes]
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Roan Kattouw roan.kattouw@home.nl wrote:
Platonides schreef:
Well, i think it's more sensible to drop the (legacy) list name: SVN [12345] (bug 12345) action=parse used to throw... [path/to/changes]
That's automatically added for every list. I'm not sure it's changeable or removable at all.
It is, but per Simetrical it might not be such a good idea to remove...
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 6:34 PM, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
Well, i think it's more sensible to drop the (legacy) list name: SVN [12345] (bug 12345) action=parse used to throw... [path/to/changes]
Mailing list subject lines are conventionally prefixed with [listname], and that's a good convention to keep.
Agreed, sometimes things get double posted. Currently I use the To/Cc to filter things, however that ends up sometimes with multiple e-mails in the same folder. I was planning on altering my filters on of these days to properly check both the To/Cc and also the start of the subject line for "[listname]" or "Re: [listname]" to filter things accurately. However, dropping listname would break that. Unless anyone wants to tell me of some secret header that mailman sends with it's list mails to help out?
~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of: -The Nadir-Point Group (http://nadir-point.com) --It's Wiki-Tools subgroup (http://wiki-tools.com) --Games-G.P.S. (http://ggps.org) -And Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG)
Simetrical wrote:
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 6:34 PM, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
Well, i think it's more sensible to drop the (legacy) list name: SVN [12345] (bug 12345) action=parse used to throw... [path/to/changes]
Mailing list subject lines are conventionally prefixed with [listname], and that's a good convention to keep.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
DanTMan wrote:
Agreed, sometimes things get double posted. Currently I use the To/Cc to filter things, however that ends up sometimes with multiple e-mails in the same folder. I was planning on altering my filters on of these days to properly check both the To/Cc and also the start of the subject line for "[listname]" or "Re: [listname]" to filter things accurately. However, dropping listname would break that. Unless anyone wants to tell me of some secret header that mailman sends with it's list mails to help out?
X-BeenThere seems to contain the list email. However, the proper header is List-Id, standarised on some rfc.
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 5:35 AM, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
DanTMan wrote:
Unless anyone wants to tell me of some secret header that mailman sends with it's list mails to help out?
X-BeenThere seems to contain the list email. However, the proper header is List-Id, standarised on some rfc.
List-Id: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org>
All I know is for most of us (reading via NNTP via gmane.org), headers like "Subject: Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [36255] trunk/phase3" don't reveal what's inside the message without having to click on them. Please use more descriptive headers, even if the content is over our heads.
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