On 2004-10-03 11:21, Laird Breyer wrote:
On Oct 02 2004, Bruce Lilly wrote:
I could answer that a reply message without any form of useful
identification tokens is relatively rare, but that's a copout,
and I don't have any numbers to back this up.
Here's an example from pentax-discuss(_at_)pdml(_dot_)net:
September 2004:
Msgs: 7642
Mbox: 23 MB
Thrds: 668
noref: 1093
That is: 1093 of 7642 messages lack either References or In-Reply-To and
are grouped together by Subject only.
Having a closer look at the threads, I see that 80 of 668 are not new
threads but could not be grouped to the matching thread since neither
matching subject nor References were given.
That's 15 % which lack proper references!
Perhaps a more constructive suggestion would be this: if we
want threading to work properly on a mailing list, why not
enlist the help of the list server, e.g. in the following way:
Since in most MUAs, the original subject is quoted when a reply is
sent, the list server could imbed a thread id into the subject line of
the messages it sends out.
Concernint the numbers above, I'd recommend this highly for digest modes.
It would not be the thread only, but both a thread ID and a subthread or
message id within this thread.
In fact it would result in a very long thread id - so the easiest would be
just to compose a subject from maybe 'Re: ', Original Subject and
[<message-ID>] which would be filtered by comparing the message-ID and
references - and putting it in there if omitted.
The list server propagates this message to all list members as follows
Subject: this is an example subject (thread-id 7.0)
This would indicate e.g. thread number 7, root message.
Don't use (), which is a typical text part. Take e.g. [] or {} - or just
<>.
7".0" is redundancy. I'd suggest e.g. "[tid: 7]"
And the list server propagates this message to the list members as follows
Subject Re: this is an example subject (thread-id 7.1)
Somebody else replies to the list address with
Subject: Antw: Re: this is an example subject (thread-id 7.1)
Which is propagated as, you guessed it,
Subject: Antw: Re: this is an example subject (thread-id 7.2)
How about the answer to Antw: Re: this is an example subject (thread-id
7.1)? Should be [tid: 7.1.1] - and not only [tid: 7.3]!?
That's a security issue, which exists independently of the
issue of accomodating list member preferences. What's the worst
that can happen now on mailing lists, and would it get significantly
worse with an "intelligent" list server?
Worst might be (or is) a virus that takes the sender's subscribed name,
sends to the list and blocks the list itself by e.b. mass postings,
virusses, huge attachments or even list server commands which are
attempted to process.
For the case of a courtesy copy, if every list member wanted one, the
effect would be insignificant, since only the parent poster should
receive a courtesy copy.
That's not necessarily that helpful - maybe the answer to the answer was
the more interesting part.
Another rule could be e.g. to set a level of answers you want - or the
level is matching to the level of quoted text: as long as an article
contained quoted text from yourself, you want a courtesy copy, and maybe
the next one as well.
I don't see a very reasonable behavior here - apart from that the user
should take care on his own and on the mails he does receive himself how
to process them. Since most mailing lists don't show significant delays,
there's no major speed advantage on its own.
However, mailing lists should do their best to encourage proper threading
and efficient quoting mechanisms to keep the net load small. One good
example is e.g. not to forward attachments but to save them in a web
archive and insert a link instead.
Regards
Martin