"Maybe I missed it but I don't see anyone else complaining..."
Well, I didn't want to speak up (I thought merlyn was precisely expressing why vanity tags are just that), but evidently I should.

I don't particularly care to know, 17 writeups deep from here, that a writeup is a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply to a reply of mine (℘) to a reply to a reply of merlyn's (•).

I do care to know if the subject of discussion has changed. So if I see "Re: X", I should be able to know it's a reply to something called "X", and that the topic hasn't changed. I want the subject to change (say to "PLEASE STOP VANITY TAGGING") if the topic has changed.

Anything that detracts from my ability to skim 200+ new nodes and tell at a glance if I should read any new topic, I dislike. I really enjoy being able to do $x cmp "Re: $subject"; I don't want to replace this string (which my primitive internal Boyer-Moore engine can easily process) with a regexp match, study or not.

WHile I'm complaining (see?), I should say I also dislike "Re^17: Re: RE:^3.141: PLEASE STOP VANITY TAGGING". It similarly lowers my scanning rate.

IF the Gods decide it is a good idea to collapse "Re:"s, then I'd expect it to happen automatically when I hit "[reply]". I even promise to adjust to the new default form, because it is the default. As long as they do not, collapsing by hand inevitably leads to inconsistency. And inconsistency increases the complexity of my regexps.

The same for vanity tags. IF everyone gets a vanity tag, let's each reserve a Unicode char (bags I `℘'!) and use that. I can adjust to consistent changes.

But please, let's not each invent our own private form of consistency!

In reply to ℘ Re: Re: •Re: Re: •PLEASE STOP VANITY TAGGING by ariels
in thread More HTML escaping by tye

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