Hi Loren,

Speaking as the email administrator at the university of tennessee -
where I've been the SysAdm for email for over 20 years - I don't know
what you mean by "more advanced email programs like Gmail and such".
I mentioned what I do for a living just so you'll know that I do know
a bit about email.  Gmail is a web based mail client... not
particularly advanced compared to any other modern web based email
clients and fairly primitive compared to many computer based email
clients.  Anyway, like all email clients that I've ever seen, it does
put "Re:" before a replied to subject.  There are a number of email
clients that let you change that behavior and a number that do not.
At one point I remember that there was discussion about putting in
into an RFC as a best practice - but I don't that ever happened.

If your email client breaks threads with "Re:" in the subject line
than your email client is broken.  Gmail (by default) puts all of the
mail in one thread together so that if you look in your inbox (for
example) you might see something like: "Alicia, me (5)" which means
that there are five messages in that thread.  All except the original
will have "Re:" before the subject.

On Feb 27, 2010, at 11:50 AM, Loren Busch wrote:

> A note for all on responding to list messages.  If your email
> program (or if
> you, by typing it in) is adding an "RE:" at the front of the Subject
> line in
> your message then your are breaking up the thread.  That "Re:" in the
> Subject creates a whole new thread.  For many of us that use more
> advanced
> email programs like Gmail and such then the continuity of the
> messages is
> lost.  And in many cases, if no part of the original message is
> included,
> the messages make no sense.  But the biggest impact is for future
> searches
> of the archived messages.  If the Subject line is changed then the
> thread is
> broken and the responses, like to a technical question, are lost or
> appear
> in a different thread. So let me suggest that you NOT include the
> "Re:" in
> the Subject.  Either don't enter it or turn that feature off in your
> email
> program.

I remain, as always
YrLyl&ObdntSrvnt,

r