Re: Subject threading and In-Reply-To

[Earl Hood <ehood@hydra.acs.uci.edu>]

On December 16, 2000 at 09:42, Ian Wilson wrote:

> The problem is that some (many I suspect) people will 
> start a new thread by doing a reply-to an existing thread and then changing 
> the subject - so we can end up with threading like:
> 
> [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Protel / Specctra problems, Todd Conard
> ·	Re: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Protel / Specctra problems, Michael Reagan
> ·	·	[PROTEL EDA USERS]: Drill Drawing symbol reference chart, D. Ch
> ris 
> Mackensen
> ·	·		RE: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Drill Drawing symbol reference 
> chart, Tony 
> Karavidas
> ·	·		Re: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Drill Drawing symbol reference 
> chart, Abd 
> ul-Rahman Lomax
> ·	·		Re: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Drill Drawing symbol reference 
> chart, Geoff 
> Harland
> ·	.	Re: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Protel / Specctra problems, Todd Conard
> ·	·	.	Re: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Protel / Specctra problems, Pet
> er Bennett
> ·	·	.	Re: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Protel / Specctra problems, Mic
> hael Reagan
> ·	.	[PROTEL EDA USERS]: Sch3 Library Editor Defaults., Ian
> ·	·	.	RE: [PROTEL EDA USERS]: Sch3 Library Editor Defaults., 
> Eric Bobillier
> 
> Clearly there are actually three threads here.  How can I best get the 
> archive to thread something like this? I want the thread based view but it 
> would good if the threading was a little more reliable.

MHonArc keys off the in-reply-to and references fields.  If a message
defines either field that references a message in the archive, MHonArc
treats it as a follow-up, regardless of the subject text.  I've seen
threads where the subject text is changed, but the message(s) are still
part of the main thread.

> I have requested that people start a new message (and hence thread) when 
> they want to create a new discussion thread but not everyone will wish to 
> do this.

Probably because of laziness.  If a user selects "reply" to a message,
they are implying that the message they are composing is a follow-up
to the message.  If a new discussion is desired, they should be selecting
"new/compose/<whatever-equivalent>".  It's easy for humans to see
what the actual intent was for a person, but much harder for computers.

--ewh