[nzlug] Thread Highjack??

[Patrick Connolly]

Somewhere about Fri, 25-May-2007 at 08:42AM +1200 (give or take),
Thread Pixie wrote:

|> Note: The next lesson will be on the evils of top-posting and 
|> over-quoting.
|> 

[....]

|> (OK, I know that that is a somewhat contrived example, but I think it 
|> illustrates the idea of context, and no matter how dumb it is, people 
|> really do write messages that just say "I agree".  If they're 
|> uber-geeky then they might just write "+1" - totally wack!)

Hence the evils of under-quoting.


|> 
|> I'm not familiar with evolution, but I imagine it offers an option to 
|> use message-id threading.  Having threading turned off by default may be 

>From my limited experience, Evolution appears to have been been made
to look like Outlook, but I've found it too flakey to tell if it goes
to the extent of having a "References:" header.  I never worked out
what the idea of such a header was since Outlook itself doesn't seem
to make any use of it (except maybe in what it calls "Conversations"
which I've found totally useless).  It is, however, nearly useful in a
real mail client such as Mutt.  The main thing wrong with it is that
it will contain a larger number of "Message-Id"s and if that includes
that of a thread-hijacker, it will end up in any subsequent messages
that also use such a header, which means that to get a thread
repaired, one has to delete the offending "Reference" from every
message in the thread and only in rare cases is that effort
worthwhile.

[....]

|> forums, and indeed, on such forums I wouldn't bother to try to educate 
|> anyone - I don't expect non-technical people to care.  (further to that, 
|> I don't *really* expect anyone to care - I'm just writing this so 
|> people *know* what they are doing)

I've had a few years' experience with a similar crusade of my own on a
list I've been subscribed to for over 10 years, and it's reasonable to
expect list members to have a degree of technical understanding.  I
have an Emacs buffer opened next to my mail client ready to copy into
a message to thread-hijackers wherein I request them to desist.  I
make the point that it's quicker to use an alias for the address than
it is to delete the subject (unless the alias is very long, of course,
but....)

About 70% of the time, that is the end of the story and the list
member gets the message.  About 20% reply and apologize while some
need further explanation, but occasionally (maybe 2 or 3% of the time)
I get a furious response protesting that they HAD started a new thread
(by their act of changing the subject).  One even mailed the whole
list accusing me of "spamming" him.  He got about 10 people explaining
to him in as many different ways what I'd tried to tell him.  He then
got the message and was very apologetic.  It was only two days later
before there was a new offender!  

In fairness, it's such a busy list, one can't possibly read every
message -- which of course is one of the reasons why threads are so
useful, enabling the deletion of whole threads in a single blow.


|> On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 11:14:22PM +1200, Robin wrote:
|> > On Thu, 24 May 2007, Karl. wrote:
|> > > Yay for thread hijacking!  Third hijack for this one thread!
|> > > Bonus points!  No lecture this time!  |> > I propose a new
|> > > rule, every new thread to the list must come from this one :)
|> 
|> I thought of that too  :-)  On the basis that we all need more rules, I 
|> fully support your proposal!  

How about requiring them to have a "References" header as well? :-)



-- 
   ___     Patrick Connolly      
 {~._.~}   
 _( Y )_          Good judgment comes from experience 
(:_~*~_:)         Experience comes from bad judgment    
 (_)-(_)