Subject: [TWEETERS] TW: Subject title for tweeters/virus stuff...
Date: Oct 7 07:58:04 2002
From: Hal Opperman - hal at catharus.net


Dear Tweets,

I recall raising with Dan Victor several years ago the same question that
Linda has just brought up. Dan inquired of the administrators at the
University of Washington, where the list is hosted, and found out that
adding a "leader" like this was contrary to some industry-wide guideline.
So they wouldn't consider it. However, maybe that has changed, and it
wouldn't hurt to ask again.

With many e-mail clients (Eudora, Microsoft Entourage...) the individual
subscriber can go in and set up "rules" so that anything coming in that has
"tweeters" somewhere in the header will automatically be tagged with
[TWEETERS] at the start of the subject line in the inbox. (See the subject
line of this message for an example of how the tweeters tag works on my
system.) That will solve the problem at an individual level. Another trick
you can pull is to set some filters so that all mail from bird lists is
segregated into a special mailbox and not mixed with your "real" mail. Thus
you can ignore the bird postings until you are ready to look at them -- once
a day, whatever. If you do this then you might decide not to subscribe to
the digest mode. One of the advantages is that you can delete, reply to, or
save messages individually, which you cannot do with the digest.

These fixes will not work for everybody, however -- notably, not for those
who get their mail off the web. So having the change made at the source (as
is done, for example, for all of the bird lists hosted at the University of
Arizona) would be a nice improvement, if Dan can work it out.

Be aware, though, that none of this has any security value, as others have
pointed out. It is for user convenience.

Hal Opperman
Medina, Washington
hal at catharus.net