mhonarc-users

Re: Subject threading and In-Reply-To

2000-12-16 00:16:08
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

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