A Proposal for Reducing Mail Clutter

[Goeke at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA]

          I have a proposal to reduce the mailing list clutter.  Suppose
User A wants to know how to framix his foo file.  He sends a standard
note to info-unix with an added field: the subject id.  The subject id
could be any alphanumeric string, but I propose it consist normally of
the date and the user and host id:
   Subject:     How do I framix a foo file?
   Subject ID:  Mar 19 09:40:02 EST 1985 UserA @ MIT-Multics.ARPA
Now comes the trick.  Anyone responding to this message uses the original
Subject ID as a Reference ID, and has no Subject ID field:
   Subject:     A kludge for putting the framix on a foo
   Reference ID:  Mar 19 09:40:02 EST 1985 UserA @ MIT-Multics.ARPA

          Your mailer now looks at the incoming mail stream.  Any message
with a Subject ID field (or neither a Subject ID field nor a Reference ID
field, to maintain backward compatibility) gets passed to you.  If, and
only if, you are interested in the subject, you store the Subject ID in
an subjects-of-interest file in your home directory.  Any message in the
incoming mail stream with a Reference ID field cause a search through
your subjects-of-interest file; only a hit will let it through to you.
Periodically, you scan your subjects-of-interest file and purge the old
references which haven't been hit in a while; though that might be
automated, it probably isn't worth it.

                                        Bob Goeke
                                          [ Goeke @ MIT-Multics.ARPA ]
                                        MIT Center for Space Research
                                        617-253-1910