[Tagging] tagging isn't likely to work

So, I almost sent out my email as PortableContacts ...

I remembered to add a tag [Contacts], but only when I decided to revise my summary.

I think that people need to consider using email clients which can do automatic classification ("tagging"). If I were using gmail (and I should be, but this is a corporate mailbox, so I'm not...), I'd set up a rule that says:
 "list(public-device-apis@w3.org) contacts" => apply-tag(dap_contacts)
or possibly two rules:
 "list(public-device-apis@w3.org)" => apply-tag(dap)
 "contacts" => apply-tag(contacts)

These rules fwiw will work even though my subject was only going to have 'PortableContacts', because the body of my message had `contacts` (in fact, on the first line...).

And yes, I know that some mail clients suck wrt rules and filtering (Outlook and Exchange server have really low limits on the number of filters, and in fact those limits are based on the precise length of the underlying query + rule data as opposed to a specific fixed rule count limit). People should complain to IT about their mail services being sucky and demand better instead of asking each mailing list to try to conform to conventions that won't work*

The chances of that being successful are much better than getting people to use summary tagging well. Not to mention cases where someone new or from another mailing list posts or cross posts ("Re: Joystick support").

* I'm not endorsing top posting, however, my current employer appends a stupid disclaimer blob to all outbound mail, which I can't remove, so asking me to remove it won't get anyone anywhere, and thus I now understand why people have such blobs (*sigh*). And wrt top posting, Gmail.java hides quoted messages and always includes the entire message you're replying to below your reply, so I now sympathize with people who have this practice. The solution to most of these problems is to get better mail clients (e.g. any Gmail client will merrily hide quoted text which means you don't have to worry about people top posting or bottom posting -- although things get dicier when people do inline reply and you can't see the context**).
** only a problem in Gmail.java which doesn't have a way to turn that off either...

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Received on Tuesday, 30 August 2011 16:01:54 UTC