[time-nuts] Thread hijacking, etc.

Rex rexa at sonic.net
Tue Apr 12 22:39:20 UTC 2011


In a previous thread, that I and others were totally corrupting by 
posting how not to do exactly what we were doing, Mike S replied to me...

On 4/12/2011 1:53 PM, Mike S wrote:
 > At 04:03 PM 4/12/2011, Rex wrote...
 >> Email message headers contain a thread-index number. Any decent 
email program groups the messages into threads using
 > > this (normally hidden) information.
 >
 > The Thread-Index: header (and Thread-Topic:) is a completely 
proprietary, non-standard header created by Microsoft.
 > From that, "decent email program" does not follow.
 >
 > The correct header to use is References:, as defined in RFC 1036 (and 
RFC 2822), and to a lesser extent, In-Reply-To:, which is a mess.
 >
 > But, since both References: and In-Reply-To: were very loosely 
defined when originally created in RFC 822, threading is, and always 
will be,
 > unreliable.
 >
 > The OP apparently replied to an existing message and put a new 
subject in. His MUA put in fresh Thread-*: headers, and handled
 > References: and Reply-To: properly. Your MUA used the updated 
References and/or Reply-To to place that message into an existing thread.
 >
 > None of that is unreasonable, none of it violates standards, yet it 
breaks threading, because support for threading was never properly
 > specified to begin with. Pointing fingers at someone is misplacing 
blame, and pissing into the wind, too.
 >


OK. Please forgive me. I gave the wrong explanation of what part of the 
email headers causes a REPLY message with a new subject, to still show 
up in the original thread. People responding to that misplaced message 
(like we just did) corrupt the intent of the original poster and can 
make the original message become lost, dissipated or irrelevant. -- 
Sorry, Joe.

I still suggest that the simple solution is to be aware not to use REPLY 
to an existing message when writing a new post that has no relationship 
to the message you are replying to. Changing the subject field seems 
logical but is insufficient because of header information.

I don't think that pointing that out is, "misplacing blame," or "pissing 
into the wind."





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