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Re: st:Re: [replying to digest messages]
On Jan 26, 2006, at 9:21 AM, Matissa Hollister wrote:
On a completely different note, I'm wondering about replying to
posts when I get the statalist in digest form. I frequently use
the archives to look up information and therefore appreciate the
posts being ordered into threads. Since I get the messages in
digest form, though, I can't just hit reply to a post and as far as
I can tell there is no option in the archives or other websites to
post replies to past messages. I'm not sure of the mechanics of
how the archives keep track of threads. I'm testing here one
approach which I hope will work, which is copying the subject line
of the original post with an "re:" in front of it. Other
suggestions would be welcome.
On Jan 26, 2006, at 10:00 AM, n j cox wrote:
My guess is that threading software goes on internal information in
the email message, namely what you are replying to, not the title,
so replying to a digest message doesn't help in maintaining
threads. You can see this by the fact that many people reply to an
existing message, but change the title because they are starting a
new thread, but that does not impress threading software. This is
irritating because the solution is available to those people and
what they are doing is just a bit lazy.
Message threading -- whether by your mail user agent (e.g., mutt,
pine, mulberry, outlook) or by an HTML archiver (like the one used to
generate the online Statalist archives) -- is usually performed using
parts of the message headers, such as the Message-Id (set
automatically by the originating MTA) and the In-Reply-To and
References fields (often set by your MUA when you reply to a
message). Some threading algorithms do take the Subject header into
account, but in general, merely using the same or a similar subject
(as Matissa describes doing) is not going to be sufficient to
"insert" your message into an existing thread. BTW, I certainly
concur with Nick: for those of us who rely heavily on threading to
manage hundreds of emails a day, the behavior of hitting "Reply" and
then starting a new thread is supremely annoying.
My suggestion to Matissa would be to stop using digest mode. Most
people initially switch to digest mode either (1) because they don't
want to be interrupted constantly throughout the day, and/or (2)
because they don't want their inbox filling up with messages.
However, modern MUAs offer excellent solutions to both of these
problems. Mail from a particular source (e.g., Statalist) can be
automatically filtered into its own mailbox, and MUAs that
automatically notify the user of incoming mail can often be set to
ignore mail arriving in certain mailboxes. Thus, for example,
although I don't use digest mode for Statalist, I typically consume
the postings "in digest form" (i.e., once or twice a day I go through
all new messages, but otherwise am not bothered by them).
Note that in addition to making it easy to respond appropriately to a
specific thread, this strategy makes Statalist easier to consume by
permitting you to make use of the threading capability of your MUA
and by making searching through your mail archives much more
efficient (i.e., you can quickly pull up the specific message/thread
you're looking for instead of what can be a large digest mailing
filled with extraneous stuff.
-- Phil
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