nettiquette, subject lines

[Simon Cox]

Joe Plesha has pointed out that my posting on this topic was perhaps not as
explicit or polite as was intended.  What I intended to communicate was a
reminder to list subscribers that they should make their subject lines as
informative as possible.  Just about every contribution to the GRASS list
could be headed "Question about Grass" so subjects like that are a complete
waste of bandwidth.

Some of us receive a large amount of mail, partly from list-servers like
the GRASS list, and descriptive subject lines allow us to make a positive
contribution to the life of the list by permitting us to filter messages
that we can respond to usefully.  These days I tend to delete without
reading anything with a non-useful subject field, and I suspect that I am
not the only one who does this.  (And the more my mail box gets clogged up
the more likely I am to unsubscribe altogether!)

Thus, if a poster wants to get the widest possible readership for their
query, it is in their own interest to think a little about the "Subject"
line.

Simon Cox

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Dr Simon Cox                          __  \
CSIRO Exploration & Mining         ,~'  L_|\    Australian
39 Fairway, PO Box 437,         ;-'         \   Geodynamics
Nedlands, WA  6009  Australia   (            \  Cooperative
      Phone +61 9 389 8421      +    ___     /  Research
      Fax   +61 9 389 1906       L~~'   "\__/   Centre
s.cox at dem.csiro.au                         7
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