Re: Please do not hijack threads [was: cPCI]

[Ralph Lange <Ralph.Lange@bessy.de>]

 Hello Ge,

Hijacking threads is happening a lot, not just to you, not just on tech 
talk. Don't worry.

Here's a bit more explanation of what is happening:

Emails contain lots of header lines before the message. Most of these 
header lines are filtered out by your email client program (e.g. 
Outlook), so you never see them.
(There should be an option like "show all information" or "show all 
headers" in your client, if you want to have a look what the email 
message really looks like.)
Some of these headers contain information, which other emails this one 
is a reply to. These header lines (that start with "In-Reply-To:" or 
"References:") can define long chains of emails, that are referred to as 
a thread.

Among a couple of other other bad things, Outlook and Outlook Express 
ignore the "In-Reply-To:" and "References:" headers and only use the 
"Subject:" line to sort emails into threads. Almost all other programs 
act correctly by ignoring the "Subject:" and using the "In-Reply-To:" 
and "References:" headers.

If you hit "Reply" , the whole chain of "In-Reply-To:" and "References:" 
headers is copied into your new mail. So - even if you change the 
"Subject:" line and Outlook shows your mail as the start of a new 
thread, the mail headers say it belongs to the other thread you were 
replying to, and all other applications will show it as part of that 
other thread.

Bottom line:
When starting a new question by email (in general, not just in tech 
talk), hit the "New message" button in your client and do not use 
"Reply". That will make sure your new question starts a new thread that 
will be recognized as such by all clients and applications.

Best regards,
Ralph


On 07.09.2010 21:12, leige wrote:
> Hi, All,
>
> I apologize for this trouble. I did post the cPCI mail by replying a mail of "time stamp question", although I modified the topic. I use outlook express. And finally I noticed how strange it looks in http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/tech-talk/2010/threads.php?expd=01293&page=16#16
>
> Sorry for this chaos.
>
> Ge
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ralph Lange"<Ralph.Lange@bessy.de>
> To: "Maren Purves"<m.purves@jach.hawaii.edu>
> Cc:<tech-talk@aps.anl.gov>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 3:51 AM
> Subject: Re: Please do not hijack threads [was: cPCI]
>
>
> >   On 07.09.2010 15:46, Maren Purves wrote:
> > > On Tue, 7 Sep 2010, Ralph Lange wrote:
> > >
> > > > Tech-Talk messages are keeping the original sender in the "From:"
> > > > header intact, so a simple "reply" should create a mail to the
> > > > original sender.
> > > > The "tech-talk-bounces" address is added in the "Sender:" and - more
> > > > importantly - "Errors-To:" headers to direct mail bounces to
> > > > mailman's automated bounce-handling mechanism.
> > > > This fully complies to the relevant RFCs and works without any
> > > > problem on most mail clients and with ten-thousands of lists that are
> > > > handled by mailman world-wide.
> > > >
> > > > What mail client are you using that shows this erroneous behavior?
> > > If it's supposed to work like that it probably does.
> > > I use pine when I'm at home, seamonkey when I'm at work.
> > Those should be fine.
> > I know that Outlook does a bunch of non-compliant weird things wrt
> > replying to mails, so I was fearing the worst....
> >
> > Happy mailing!
> > ~Ralph
> >