Hi Andy and others who support what Andy is trying to get at;
I just realized, that I had quite misunderstood what you meant by the term "thread hijacking".And I have the funny feeling, that I may not be the only one :)
In one of your other notes on this thread, you mentioned your disdain for buzzwords like "netiquette", but here you went starting a whole discussion using a buzzword :)
You didn't explain what the term thread-hijacking actually meant, and I hadn't heard it before. My earlier post assumed, that you meant the phenomenon, when a conversation drifts from one topic to another in a conversational sense.
However slowly I clued in, that you probably meant something purely technical, in the sense of what actually happens when one uses the "reply" button or command in many (most?) email clients.
So maybe you'll want to explain to the rest of the list, what actually happens (behind the scenes in a graphical email client) and the difference of pressing reply vs. just starting a new message. Your beef maybe not so much with inconsiderate behavior, but just a lack of detail know-how. This list is good at furthering technical know-how. And furthered know-how will probably do more to address your concern than anything else.
So maybe you'll actually be very successful (not even getting an argument from anyone!), if you think of the issue as a technical knowledge issue, rather than a "rule of conduct".
For example, if you start something like this:
<SNIP> Subject: Threading in email clients (and Usenet newsgroups, too?)
I'm not sure, if everyone knows this, but many email clients have a feature to display emails in a threaded hierarchy, which is an indented outline format, where each reply to a message shows up one more level indented under the message, which it has been replied to. In addition, the mailing list archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ displays the messages from this group in such a format.
This is possible because of some additional data which the email programs put behind the scenes, usually invisible to most graphical email programs unless you look at the header or the raw text source of an email.
.... </SNIP>
etc. etc. you could explain here - Andrew, I leave it to you to actually fill in the rest of the technical explanation (if you feel like it) since it is your pet peeve, not mine :)
And rather then asking for a "rule" you could finish your message to the group with something like this:
<SNIP>
.... A number of us readers follow the group in a threaded view, and the mailing list archive provides for the threaded view, too. So If you just hit the "reply" button in your email, when you really meant to be starting a new conversational thread or topic, your message may get buried in obscurity many levels down, and people may not read it, since they weren't interested in the topic that the original thread was all about. Changing the subject line does NOT start a new thread.
So if you want to start a new conversation, and you want it to make sure that it is obvious to the readers, don't just hit the reply button to another message but make sure you start by composing a new message. That way will you decrease your chances of your message being missed or ignored.
p.s. Some email clients, use the term "conversation" rather than "thread" - in this context they mean the same thing.
</SNIP>
what do you think?
...Niels
Andrew J. Kopciuch wrote:
I just read through the rules for the CLUG mailing lists. There is no mention of thread hijacking. I have noticed this has been happening in greater amounts lately.
Thread hijacking is considered "bad form" on public mail lists and forums. This is because it defeats the purpose of mail clients that have the ability to sort messages by thread.
Should there not be some mention of it in the mailing list rules?
Andy
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