At 11:50 AM 2/27/2010, 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.

No. Messages are linked into threads by use of a "References:" header.
See RFC2822. Unfortunately, L-Soft LISTSERV likes to rewrite headers,
and doesn't handle this one.

>For many of us that use more advanced email programs like Gmail

Advanced? Hardly. Google is a net newbie, and does as many things
incorrectly with Gmail as MS has done with Outlook. One example is
always sending MIME encoded HTML, with no option for standard plain
text only. Their mobile Gmail insists on base64 encoding _everything_,
a very stupid thing to do, and they don't even to that correctly.

>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.

Adding "Re:" is perfectly proper, and any decent MUA (email client)
should be able to handle it. Per RFC2822:

"Subject:"...
"[This field is] intended to have only human-readable content with
information about the message.  The "Subject:" field is the most common
and contains a short string identifying the topic of the message.  When
used in a reply, the field body MAY start with the string "Re: " (from
the Latin "res", in the matter of) followed by the contents of the
"Subject:" field body of the original message. If this is done, only
one instance of the literal string "Re: " ought to be used since use of
other strings or more than one instance can lead to undesirable
consequences."