How about editing subject headers?
Description
This article is from the Singles FAQ, by Trygve Lode tlode@nyx.net with numerous contributions by others.
How about editing subject headers?
This is an important and much-neglected art. Often the topic
will have strayed far from its original one and a discussion on
gerbil rolfing will be carried out under the heading "Favorite
skiing lingerie." When this happens, it's entirely appropriate
to change the heading to something a little closer to the topic
under discussion. On the other hand, it's best not to change
the topic too often, especially when it's a hotly debated topic
that is only peripherally (if at all) involved with singledom
and it is likely that many people will be killing the topic
(see the section on killfiles later in this file) in an attempt
to avoid reading about it. Sometimes, when you do change the
subject header, you may wish to list what the previous topic
was as well; for example, if the topic being discussed under
"Spiders vs. Lemon Pate'" had strayed to an in-depth
examination of the sexual habits of people with mohawks, you
might want to change the subject to "Mohawk Sex (was: Spiders
vs. Lemon Pate')" which would allow those who are following the
discussion under one heading to continue to follow it under the
new heading.
Even more important than occasionally changing the subject to
match the actual topic being discussed is eliminating
inappropriate groups when replying to a cross-posted article;
no matter what newsgroup you might be reading when you decide
to respond to an article, if you see more than one group listed
in the "Newsgroups:" line of the header, your article is going
to appear in all of them, so make sure that you delete any
inappropriate groups from the list before sending your article.
There are enough people out there who crosspost to a lot of
groups maliciously, just to see how many people they can
irritate with a few keystrokes, that a lot of readers don't
have much patience left when it comes to articles
inappropriately crossposted to the newsgroups they read, so you
can make a lot of people pissed off at you by responding to a
heavily crossposted article without taking the time to trim off
the groups where your message doesn't really belong. Be warned,
too, that there's enough of a problem with crossposting that
many readers simply kill [don't read] articles that are
crossposted to more than a few groups or, sometimes,
crossposted at all, so a lot of people won't even see your
article if you leave the extraneous groups in.
If you simply must reply to a heavily crossposted article and
have your article appear in all the groups the previous article
was posted to, you also have the option of listing just the
relevant groups in the "Followup-To:" line of the header; that
way responses to your article will show up just in the
newsgroups you list and you'll annoy fewer readers, since even
if they think your article is inappropriate for the group
they're reading, at least you'll look like you're making some
effort to be considerate of other groups.
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