COMM: Adding subject lines (WAS:Re: COMM: Re: [Sigia-l] community)

[Lorelei Brown]

> involved. Individuals can choose to add Subject
> comments or not, and any
> conventions will develop over time, if they do at
> all.

FWIW - I do belong to a list (DC Web Women) that has
some basic guidelines for subject lines. This has been
strictly adhered to both because the community values
the order that it brings to the list, and some
coaching of new users (there's a volunteer who spends
about two hours a week on this task on a list of a
couple of thousand people).

Their guidelines are as follows - a pretty basic
controlled vocabulary:

Use an ALL CAPS Header 
Each post to the list should contain an all-caps
header in the subject line. Using a CAPITALIZED HEADER
makes it easier for members to scan posts and read or
delete as suits them. Examples are: QUESTION or Q:
(for posting questions or answers), DISCUSSION:, JOB:
(for job postings), SUMMARY: (to summarize answers
which have been posted to a question, SITESEEING: (to
recommend a site), and INFO:. Look at the headings
used in other posts and you'll get the idea. 

In any case, it's been working for seven years and
4,000 people with little incident and high compliance.


Lorelei

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Lorelei Brown
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