(urth) crackdown 2.0

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 12:56 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
> On 6/7/2010 9:37 PM, Ranjit Bhatnagar wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Gwern Branwen<gwern0 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> I would also like to add a third suggestion: *please stop changing
>>> subjects*!
>>>
>>> I try not to complain but merely 'mute' or 'killfile' threads I find
>>> dull or stupid (like a great many in the past few weeks), but I cannot
>>> do this if people keep changing the subjects - the emails with
>>> modified subjects will land right in my inbox, and like a rat on an
>>> intermittent reinforcement schedule, I will read it to see whether
>>> something interesting has been said.
>
> I do not feel it right for you to expect everyone else to modify their
> behavior to suit your reading preferences.

I see. Will you be extending your little anarchist free speech crusade
to the *entirety* of netiquette? Or just the parts that people bring
up?

I ask for subject changes to match genuine topic changes precisely so
other people do not have to change what they write, to allow me to opt
out. If they don't, then I'm forced to either unsubscribe entirely, or
do my best to destroy each offending thread. I don't want to do
either.

>> This is also officially encouraged behavior.  Think of it as a
>> bureaucratic filing system - even if the topic of discussion drifts,
>> keeping the subject the same helps keep the thread of thought
>> together.
>
> Wait a minute - just two weeks ago you said "It's a good idea to edit the
> subject line of a discussion to reflect the topic being discussed" - which
> is it?

There's nothing inconsistent here, except in your head.

I asked you offlist to look at the list of threads for just June and
tell me whether you thought each and every one was a genuine subject
edit in response to a topic change. You didn't. So I'll provide an
example from http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2010-June/thread.html

What topic change, pray tell, is signaled by switching from
'travelling north' to 'Urth Digest, Vol 70, Issue 15'?

-- 
gwern