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st: new postings versus replies to existing threads


From   Phil Schumm <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   st: new postings versus replies to existing threads
Date   Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:40:29 -0600

A frequent admonishment on Statalist (as on other user lists) is to use an informative subject line when posting. Many readers (myself included) are often forced, due to time constraints and/or high overall mail volume, to read the list by scanning the subject lines of new messages and ignoring those postings/threads on subjects that are not of interest. As a consequence, failing to use an informative subject line risks failing to reach readers who might otherwise be interested in your posting and, just perhaps, in answering your question(s).

To this, I would like to add another piece of advice. As many readers are aware, every email message carries in its headers something called a message ID (the exact name of the header is "Message-Id"). This ID is assigned by your mail server when you send a message. Similarly, when you use the "Reply To" function in your mailer to reply to a message, the ID of the message you are replying to is put into a header called "In-Reply-To". Not all mailers follow this standard, but many do. This In-Reply-To header is then used by mailers that support threading to identify messages belonging to a particular thread. Again, the details often differ across mailers, but several of the mailers I'm aware of work this way.

As a result, if you send a message to the list by replying to a previous message, your message may end up threaded underneath that previous message in readers' mailboxes, and therefore if they ignore the previous message as being uninteresting to them they may end up ignoring yours as well. Note that this may happen regardless of whether you change the subject line, since that does not affect the contents of the In-Reply-To header. It's true that some mail servers strip the In-Reply-To headers off messages that pass through them, and that some mailers will attempt to thread messages according to the subject header when an In-Reply-To header is not available. Moreover, the actual threading algorithms used by mailers are often complex and can make use of additional headers (e.g., References) if available, so it is difficult to predict behavior in any given case. Nonetheless, I frequently see instances on Statalist of a posting starting an entirely new thread (or asking a new question) which contains an In-Reply-To header corresponding to the ID of a previous, unrelated message. And in my case, I miss such postings entirely unless I take the time to expand the corresponding thread and look through it.

In sum, I would urge those starting a new thread to do so by creating an entirely new message in their mailer, rather than replying to a previous message and simply changing the subject. Such behavior is occasionally appropriate, as for example when continuing an existing thread under a new subject or forking a thread into sub-threads. Typically, though, what is desired is to start an entirely new thread. Following this procedure will increase the chances that your question is read, and will make the Statalist archives more useful for all of us.


-- Phil

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