Discussion on mailing lists; and indexing

peter Murray-rust (p.murray-rust@mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk)
Thu, 1 Feb 1996 21:09:28 +0000 (GMT)

I am really pleased to see the energy and discipline that is being
devoted to the discussion on Hydrophobicity. (I also think it was a very
appropriate question from Simon - thanks). This illustrates that way
that *students* in the course can contribute top-class material - many of
you are very familiar with some of the data and arguments required.

This discussion has lasting value in its own right and I'm making a small
plea to help us preserve it. When we come to review the course material
(or perhaps to use some of it for glossary items :-), it is very useful
to have a precise title for the threads. If all of the replies are
*precisely* of the form:
Re: <orginal subject>
the hypermailer and any indexer will group them all together. (Have a
look at the hypermail output to see what I mean). If, however, a spare
'Re:' or (fwd) creeps in, then the mailer thinks it is a new topic.

You may not feel it now, but let's think 6 months ahead when you wish to
revise 'hydrophobicity'. It would be useful to have an index of topics
in the course and for anyone to be able to revisit them. This is just
about possible if the word occurs in the title of a page - less easy if
it's in the body. I think that during this course we shall be looking
out for technology that makes this simpler - if anyone has any ideas let
us know!

P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Glaxo Research & Dev. (pmr1716@ggr.co.uk); (BioMOO: PeterMR)
Birkbeck College, ubcg09q@cryst.bbk.ac.uk, CBMT/Daresbury mbglx@seqnet.dl.ac.uk
http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/PPS/index.html, http://www.dl.ac.uk/CBMT/HOME.html