Really clear subject lines

[Arthur Comings <atc -at- CORTE-MADERA -dot- GEOQUEST -dot- SLB -dot- COM>]

> I suggest we start with the following categories.  My proposed tag follows
> each category.  Feel free to send me your suggestions for alternative tags
> and/or modified categories:

> advertising messages  <AD>
> jobs/contracts offered <$$>
> jobs/contracts wanted <$?>
> meeting notices <MTG>
> questions <??>  (answers would thus become RE:??)
> humor <HUM>  or  <:-)>
> interesting trivia <TRIV>
> opinions/ranting/flames <OP> or <OP*%> or <*%!>



I think it's great to start encouraging some standards for subject
lines, but what's stopping us from being a little clearer?  Let's use
real words or common abbreviations. People shouldn't have to scrutinize
those ascii characters to see if they're "$$" or "$?".  No one said we
have to create emoticons -- we can use real words!

If we leave out the angle brackets, we've picked up some space there --
although I don't think "real estate" is much of a problem here.  Why
make people read through non-alphabetic characters  like brackets when
they don't have to, anyway? This isn't DOS command-line stuff anymore.

Just so I can put my money where my mouth is, here are my ideas for
clear tags that no one has to sit there and figure out.  And yes, I'd
be happy to coordinate such an effort as well.

Here are my ideas. Note that they're self-explanatory, which I think
should be true of any that we settle on.


Advt:

Course (NJ):

Meeting (NY):

Question:

Job (CA):

Want job (MA):

Joke:

Trivia:

Flame:





Arthur Comings

GeoQuest
Corte Madera, California
atc -at- corte-madera -dot- geoquest -dot- slb -dot- com