"Adium-devl" subject mangling

[Zachary West]

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 10:05, Augie Fackler <lists at durin42.com> wrote:
> For those of us that *don't* filter all lists out of the inbox, it's
> actually quite handy. Also, I'm in the same boat as Eric - never seen a
> compelling argument against them that isn't just "they're old."

It's not that they're old, it's that they're a relic of many years ago
when you _couldn't_ determine what mailing list a particular piece of
mail is from.

Compare this:

http://hiks.net/screenshots/61a7a74cdaddcbc5c777729437d0bf68.png

To this:

http://hiks.net/screenshots/8aef1700aa7d469ae142a6f0f4c3ab85.png

Even ignoring Gmail's stupid labels being there, the "Adium-devl"
subject prefix (I went back a few pages in history, because my own
sent messages don't have it, and it's ridiculous seeing them in
comparison to mangled, which is why I really started hating the
mangling) is unbelievably redundant. It occupies a significant amount
of space, with no advantage.

What does the prefix give you? Nothing. It just decreases the amount
of subject-line you're able to see, and forces an extra level of
indentation in any particular list of mails.

I don't filter it to mail either: in Mail.app I apply a colored
background to the list to differentiate mailing lists. Try it out:
it's just as helpful, but nowhere near as manipulative of the subject.

The argument in favor of keeping them is that "it's how it always has
been" or "it makes it easier to see what they're from". Well, the
former is because these headers didn't exist yet, and the latter is
because filtering didn't apply to them before.

It's easy to scan through or search through the pidgin devel mailing
list subjects.

Zac