X-Message-Number: 4057 Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 14:41:56 -0800 From: "Kevin Q. Brown" <kqb> Subject: ADMIN: Subject lines While scanning through the archives I noticed that many messages have nondescriptive subjects such as: Re: CryoNet #4080 - #4567 This makes the archives less useful because it's not clear from the subject what is the actual topic of the message. Of course, I realize that for some people it may be difficult to send messages with more descriptive subject lines because the "reply" commands in their mail programs generate the subject lines automatically and are not easy to override. Now I have done something to help fix that. A recent enhancement to the CryoNet software will give you a second chance to set the subject line for your message. If the first nonblank line of the body of your message begins with: Subject: the new software will _replace_ the Subject line in the header of your message with that new Subject line before building the CryoNet digest. For example, the message: From: Subject: Re: CryoNet #3507 - #4023 Subject: Frozen dinners Has anyone requested preservation of their favorite foods so that they will have something good to eat when they are revived? will go to CryoNet as: From: Subject: Frozen dinners Has anyone requested preservation of their favorite foods so that they will have something good to eat when they are revived? As you can see, this small software enhancement remarkably improves the quality of discussion on CryoNet! :-) The software recognizes small variations on a Subject line, too. It's OK to put leading blank space before "Subject:" and either upper or lower case letters are OK. You can even abbreviate to "subj:", but you _must_ have the trailing colon. This is because some legitimate English sentences beginning with "Subject" should _not_ be interpreted as Subject lines. For example: Subject to conditions blah blah blah, clearly blather blather blather. By the way, the new software also removes trailing blank lines and extra blank lines at the beginning of the messages, too. Kevin Q. Brown Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4057