brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (06/29/84)
The news software can (and does) record followup chains when an article is followed up. Thus it is possible to detect which articles are continuations of a discussion by checking the References line. So there is no reason to have a useless subject. Mark has suggested the subject be left to scan for followups. The only reason for this is that old software (and other systems like AM-Digests and notes) doesn't update the References line so you can't spot followups as easily unless you use the Re: line. In fact the Re: line is all you can have with a mail system, sadly. But I don't agree with this. The net is growing like crazy. When I joined it three years ago, I read it all. Now i can only read a small fraction, saying "n" to most articles, and it still takes up more of my time. Not to mention disk on my machine. Eventually we'll have moderators, but in the meantime we need some way people can decide what they are going to read. In general, I say "n" to almost all Re: articles, because I don't have the time to check out what the new article is really about. (After all, if it's just a duplicate of, agreement with or refutation of the parent, I don't want to read it) Sure some articles can be summed up in fewer than 30 chars. But they are few and far between, so it would be better to insist people be more precise in summing up. The final solution may be the combination of Subject: and Synopsis: or whatever, with the shorter one coming at 300 baud and the full deal at high speed. While we're at it, I would like to see the followup command only make a note of the article to be followed up, and then let you follow up once the entire group has been read through. Ie. you say "f" and it says, "OK, I'll ask you for your followup when this group is finished" K News forever! -- Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ontario (519) 884-7473