OT - the OT tag and the Re bug.

I first identified this problem in the sim group, but it happens here
too. I'm sure it happens everywhere, but since I live here, this is
where I'm concerned.

The subject line of a reply universally has the letters "r" "e" and a
colon in front. The software does this automatically. But to avoid an
infinite regress ("...") the software also senses a
pre-existing "" and eats it first. Most software is good at that.
Some isn't.

Seems one common bug is to simply eat everything in front of the colon.
(I presume the first colon) before prepending the "". This has an
unfortunate side effect for those who follow a prepend (such as "OT" or
"POL") with a colon. The prepend gets eaten, and replaced with "",
and newsreaders who sort by subject have that chain of responses mixed
in with their on-topic subjects, negating the effect of the prepend in
the first place. The reply is still of the same thread (defined by the
message ID) as the original "OT:" post, but sorting by threads doesn't
work well, especially when only unread posts are desired.

An example of this can be seen in the "OT: Electric cars?" thread.

A solution is for posters to =not= follow a prepend with a colon. Use a
dash, or nothing at all, and this won't happen.

Just a thought.

Jose
--
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that just want to
know what button to push, and those that want to know what happens when
they push the button.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.