Re: Mailing list etiquette: do NOT press 'reply' when starting a new thread

[Ico Doornekamp <lua@...>]

* On 2009-08-11 Patrick Donnelly <batrick@batbytes.com> wrote  :

> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Asko Kauppi<askok@dnainternet.net> wrote:
> >
> > Since this still happens so often, I am bothering everyone on the list.
> >
> > Pressing 'reply' to start a new thread is easy for the poster. You get the
> > Lua list address (lua@bazar2.conectiva.com.br) without needing to copy/paste
> > or type it.
> >
> > Unfortunately, it has the following consequences:
> >
> > - it completely messes up mail clients (s.a. OS X Mail) that can show
> > discussion threads
> >        i.e. the "LuaJIT performance" thread remained "clean" for quite a
> > while. Now it's merged with "How to create multi-dimensional table in C"
> > thread.
> >
> > - it messes up the threads also in the Lua list archive, so "next in thread"
> > won't actually do as it says
> >
> > PLEASE, stop this habit, and someone please take on the habit of mentioning
> > it to newcomers who don't know.
> >
> > Just press 'New message'. :)
> 
> Pressing "Reply" works just fine in Gmail. Some e-mail providers just
> suck I guess : /

The problem is not with the e-mail providers, but with the users.

Every mail has an unique ID attached to it. If one replies to a message,
a header is included in the mail to indicate the preceeding message to
which the mail is a reply. For example, in the headers of the mail I'm
typing now you can see the line:

In-Reply-To: <790db3550908110017l76621928s597c11f5b9c144e5@mail.gmail.com>

These headers are used by mail clients to keep track of threads.

So, if you'd reply to a mail, and simply change the subject, this will
result in wrong behaviour, because the In-Reply-To header 'remembers'
the original thread the mail belongs to.

I usually post new messages to a mailing list by replying to the list,
and then removing the In-Reply-To header before sending it off, because
I'm too laze to look up the list address.

-- 
:wq
^X^Cy^K^X^C^C^C^C