On Fri, 2008-03-14 at 21:00 -0600, Wade Preston Shearer wrote:
> > You are definitely mistaken.  None of the posts in this thread were
> > hijacked (go back and re-read stuart's instructive comments on the
> > matter).
> 
> How is taking a message about XFS and changing the subject to Gmail  
> not hijacking the thread?

There are 2 interpretations of the word "subject". Neither one of them
justifies your incorrect usage of the term "hijack".

If you mean the natural progression of the thread from one topic to
another, that's not hijacking because there's a common history that
unites the messages. Remember that email header torriem mentioned
Outlook ignores? That header is used to recognize messages with
different subject lines but a common history, and distinguish unrelated
threads with the same subject line.

If you mean changing the subject line displayed by your MUA, updating
the subject line is considered good practice when the topic has clearly
transitioned from the old topic to something new. Although the
sub-thread is clearly distinct from the parent, it is still appropriate
to display it as a child of the parent because of related messages in
the sub-thread before the subject line was updated.

And this why gmail "conversations" annoy me so much. Until we achieve
true artificial intelligence, they will continue to fail to
algorithmically replicate history destroyed by not supporting simple
threading.


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