[ExI] Regarding Wickedness (was beowolf)

[David Lubkin]

Lee wrote:

>Don't forget the signaling effect of keeping the same subject
>line.

Subject line is a subtle matter. *I* read just about everything, but 
I know plenty of odd people who discriminate. They have a life 
outside mailing lists and choose to skip threads.

If I retain the subject line, even though the topic has changed, I 
retain the readership that had been following the previous topic(s). 
I lose those who would have been interested but have abandoned the 
thread or skipped it altogether.

I used to always change the subject line, for truth in advertising. I 
still do, much of the time, but I've found that a typical posting of 
mine is more likely to generate a reply if it is in a pre-existing 
thread. That could be read as about my reputation, but I think it's 
just a facet of established marketing and meme principles.

In the best of all possible worlds, I would have an intelligent agent 
that mined the list and the outer web, built a predictive model of 
each list member, and tuned my posting so that each reader saw a 
personal version that optimized the likelihood that they'd read and 
reply to to it, much as Amazon does.

>It can be read "I am too busy, and have far more important things to 
>think about and to work on  than futzing
>with such details."

*I* don't understand those who don't spent the time to clean and trim 
when replying. A *lot* of people (speaking not of here per se; I'm on 
over 100 lists) who ought to know better have reply habits that, at 
best, come off as gauche.

More as "I am too busy, and have far more important things to think 
about and to work on than all of you put together."


-- David.