Re: Thread and subject changing
- From: Peter J Ross <pjr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 20:09:38 +0100
On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 09:25:15 -0700, Mike Easter <MikeE@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote in news.software.readers:
Reference line vs subject vs attributed citation
To discuss when and how [and how much and how often] a replier should
change the /subject/ of a thread but not initiate a /new/ thread vs
starting a new thread with a new message but using a citation and
attribution from a message in an old thread/subject. For example:
should the subject *never* be changed, in favor of starting a new thread
with a New message rather than a Reply to as opposed to than simply
replying and changing or amending the subject?
If you quote text from other people's articles, you should include a
reference to the articles you're quoting. This isn't unique to Usenet:
citing sources of quoted text is equally appropriate in printed books,
Web pages and everywhere else.
There are two standard ways of doing this on Usenet:
1. If you're quoting text from a single article, put the original
article's Message-Id in the References header and mark the quoted text
as quoted, usually with ">", while including an attribution at the
top. This is what all non-broken newsreading software does
automagically if you hit the follow-up key.
2. If you're quoting from more than one article, don't use a
References header or attribution line. Instead, mark each quotation as
a quotation, usually with ordinary double or single quotation marks,
and provide the attribution and Message-Id at the bottom of it.
There are variants and extensions of both methods. For instance,
people often reply to an article that is itself a reply, preserving
the previous attribution line and quoted text for context; again, this
usually happens automagically.
If the reply changes the topic, the Subject header should be changed,
but the convention is to preserve visible continuity by adding "(was:
Old Subject)" after the new Subject. This can then be removed if
somebody replies to your article.
If you don't quote any text at all, you shouldn't use References and
you should write your own new Subject.
IMO many topics start to 'drift' slightly [compared to the original
subject] as soon as they are replied to. IMO subject and body matching
and subject-body 'organizational' relationship are typically imperfect.
IMO some people topic drift worse than others, and post OT more and
worse than others.
Yes, all this happens, and is tolerated to different degrees in
different groups. Usually the Subject header isn't changed until after
the topic has already drifted in previous posts, or when a poster is
aware of deliberately changing the topic.
Since I have those opinions and am also prone to not thread my news
articles to read them, my opinions aren't as valuable as others who
frequent this newsgroup and who actually /thread/ their news for
reading.
I *usually* view articles threaded, but I *always* use References
headers, or Message-Ids cited in the bodies of the articles, to check
what's been written previously. Articles, including their headers,
should be written to assist *all* readers, however they choose to
arrange the list of articles on the screen.
I'm also not familiar with whether or not any newsreaders make
it easier to convert the citation and attribution from a previous
message into an absolutely new thread with no reference line without
using a cut and paste operation from a reply message into a new message.
If I decided to abandon this reply and write an article about
something else instead, I could delete the References header, replace
the Subject, delete all the quoted text and thus create a completely
new article, unrelated to yours, without exiting my editor. This is
easy whenever an external editor is used, and I think some
newsreaders' internal editors, such as XNews's, allow the same to be
done.
But cutting the References *without* also cutting what's referred to
isn't good practice. If in doubt, leave the References alone.
Or stated another way from the new message perspective: Obviously most
new messages are created de novo. Under what circumstances should new
messages be manufactured from old messages because the subject has
changed and therefore the thread should be changed into a new message
with no old references?
If you quote texts from other posts, there should always be a
References header or other method of finding the originals.
This topic is being discussed in a spamcop newsgroup by some people who
don't have as much nntp experience as those who frequent this ng. I'm
not a good advisor 'by myself' because I'm a non-threader and an
inveterate topic-drifter.
*I* never allow the topic to drift, even if beer is mentioned.
Mmmm... beer!
PJR :-)
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