[Assorted-commits] SF.net SVN: assorted: [712] mailing-list-filter/trunk/README

[<yan...@us...>]

Revision: 712
          http://assorted.svn.sourceforge.net/assorted/?rev=712&view=rev
Author:   yangzhang
Date:     2008-05-07 23:03:28 -0700 (Wed, 07 May 2008)

Log Message:
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added an overview readme

Added Paths:
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    mailing-list-filter/trunk/README

Added: mailing-list-filter/trunk/README
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--- mailing-list-filter/trunk/README	                        (rev 0)
+++ mailing-list-filter/trunk/README	2008-05-08 06:03:28 UTC (rev 712)
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+% Mailing List Filter
+% Yang Zhang
+
+Overview
+--------
+
+I have a Gmail account that I use for subscribing to and posting to mailing
+lists.  When dealing with high-volume mailing lists, I am typically only
+interested in those threads that I participated in.  This is a simple filter
+for starring and marking unread any messages belonging to such threads.
+
+This is accomplished by looking at the set of messages that were either sent
+from me or explicitly addressed to me.  From this "root set" of messages, we
+can use the `Message-ID`, `References`, and `In-Reply-To` headers to determine
+threads, and thus the other messages that we care about.
+
+I have found this to be more accurate than my two original approaches.  I used
+to have Gmail filters that starred/marked unread any messages containing my
+name anywhere in the message.  This worked OK since my name is not too common,
+but it produced some false positives (not that bad, just unstar messages) and
+some false negatives (much harder to detect).
+
+A second approach is to tag all subjects with some signature string.  This
+usually is fine, but it doesn't work when you did not start the thread (and
+thus determine the subject).  You can try to change the subject line, but this
+is (1) poor netiquette, (2) unreliable because your reply may not register in
+other mail clients as being part of the same thread (and thus other
+participants may miss your reply), and (3) unreliable because replies might not
+directly referencing your post (either intentionally or unintentionally).  It
+also fails when others change the subject.  Finally, this approach is
+unsatisfactory because it pollutes subject lines, and it essentially replicates
+exactly what Message-ID was intended for.


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