[Coral-List] On messages to the list and indirectly on sunscreen

[Peter Sale]

Hi,
I receive coral-list as the digest.  It arrives once or perhaps twice a day.  It usually begins with a piece of boilerplate:
“When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Coral-List digest...", e.g., cut and paste the
Subject line from the individual message you are replying to. Also,
please only include quoted text from prior posts that is necessary to
make your point; avoid re-sending the entire Digest back to the list.”

What follows is a list of messages from people who have more-or-less followed, or not, those instructions.  Today’s digest was particularly bad (thus provoking this response).  Every one of the four messages (there were 7 messages total) that began with the header ‘Re: effect of sunscreen on corals’ was followed by an interminable set of prior messages, repeated, sometimes twice within the string for a single new message.

I have a suggestion:  Even when responding to a string of messages on a particular topic, why don’t we all, routinely, always start a new message to the list, but using as subject the same set of words as the subject of the message being responded to?  That way, every message on that topic would have the same header, but no message would needlessly include prior messages.  Yes, it would require more care (I know because I also have sent messages by using ‘reply’ instead of ‘new message’)  But our lives might become slightly more sane?

Re sunscreen.  Is there anything new to add, or could we close this discussion now?
(I think I’ll now go off-line until the flak subsides.)  😉

Peter Sale