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1b1ed1a
(Get the code!)
Many large mailing lists use bracketed prefixes in subjects as a way to filter messages into smaller buckets, allowing some subscribers to read all mail sent to the list while allowing others to filter messages (in their mail client) to read only the messages they are interested in.
For example, the W3C's www-style mailing list uses these tags to filter messages based on which CSS spec they refer to. Thus, a subject line that begins "[css3-fonts]" will be assumed to be about only the css3-fonts spec, with a target audience of only those interested in that particular spec and not, say, the css3-flexbox spec (whose subject lines would be prefixed with "[css3-flexbox]").
To handle this, the Mailman archive interface would provide an option to filter only on particular prefixes (as well as messages that don't have any prefixes), allowing a user of the archive to use it as they otherwise would, but filtering the output such that they only see the messages they want to see, instead of the whole archive.
In addition, it would be helpful to allow mailing lists to automatically prefix subject lines when the message is sent to an e-mail address using a plus alias.
For example, sending mail to <email address hidden> would prefix the subject line of the message with "[css3-fonts]" in the message sent to subscribers and in the archive, whereas sending mail to <email address hidden> would prefix the message with "[css3-flexbox]".
It should also be allowed to have multiple prefixes on a message, and having such messages be treated as if they had any prefix individually. In terms of plus aliasing, there are two ways to handle it: (1) allow aliases to specify multiple prefixes in a plus alias using some separator (e.g. a comma: www-style+
Now, I understand that this is likely a huge undertaking, but I think it would go a long way to helping users with large and diverse mailing lists.