Re: Message threading [was: Re: Patch reviewing: style vs. content [was: [PATCH] Issue 1628]]

David James wrote:
> Google ignores the 'References' header because it is often incorrect.

Your description below is that the References header is *correct* but
the users are not employeeing the software as designed. The References
header is accurate in that it contains the unique identifiers
(Message-ID) for the message that was the source (in Reply to) of the
current message. That's what it's for; just because some/many/most
people don't understand it doesn't make it incorrect.

> People often reply to unrelated messages, just so that they don't have
> to type the email of the person who typed the message. They change the
> subject line, and they assume that this will change the thread of the
> message. Google's software is only acting in concert with our own
> expectations.

People are stupid; as the joke goes:

        You know how smart the average person is?
        Half the people are dumber than that!

Gmail is behaving differently than design, even it is, on a shallow
level, behaving as *some* people might expect.

This is a technical discussion list; most people on the list should be
able to cope with messages sorted a variety of ways. If a discussion
has veered from it's original course, and is now discussing a very
different topic, I think it is completely appropriate to rename the
Subject (with the understanding that this might cause some minor
threading issues).

John

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Received on Tue Jul 26 18:22:59 2005