I realize that this topic has been discussed a lot on this list, but I do have a new suggestion below. I innocently "replied" with new subject several times on this list and received what I see is the routine flame from the group policepersons, who seem like to the innocent to be like a group of arrogant teenagers. The first time I did it I got a nice and useful reply from "Matt T." that began: ***************************************************************** "Hi Henry, Next time start a new thread with your question please!" **************************************************************** I looked at this, thought that this was a nice admonition, worth listening to, and interpreted it to mean that the first sentence of a new thread should be a question rather than an introductory sentence. This seemed peculiar to me, but, thought I, this is a German list and perhaps an initial question is part of the local notion of ordnung. So I resolved to start any future post with a question. So I posted another question and got really nasty replies about, as one of them spelled it, "highjacking" threads. Since then I have read about related topics in the archives. One of the policepersons says that hijacking threads is like "farting in an elevator", which is nonsense. No decent person, anywhere, would fart in an elevator. It is more like this: once about 25 years ago I was in backwoods Africa and I visited a village where everyone was cordial and welcoming. I was led to the village hearth to greet the ancestors and drink sour milk from the sacred cattle lineage. When everyone sat down, I did too, but I sat in the chair of the village owner, who had been dead 8 months but whose spirit occupied the chair and was present at the fire. This was a big faux pas. People who had been to school were amused, and they took me aside to explain about the dead guy's chair. The local yokels, meantime, were horrified and appalled. Bad things would happen to the village because of the violation! Outrage! People innocent of threads are like me in the dead guy's village, not like someone who farts in an elevator. There are lots of the innocent who show up on this list for help, and they ought to be treated as the local educated people treated me, not as the local riff-raff treated me. What someone needs to do is write a boilerplate explanation of thread hijacking that would be sent to people like me. It ought to be polite and helpful, and it should have a lot of detail. For example it needs to spell out that threading is done not by the Subject header but by invisible headers that mysteriously keep track of threads and that are an established internet standard (in spite of the awkward fact, according to Mr. Mahlmoud, that the SuSE system threads on Subject ... never mind). Perhaps the policepersons on this list could assign the boilerplate to a function key so that it would be easy to enlighten the puzzled. All ths is not inconsequential for SuSE. My response to the flames I received was to reason that none of us need this and to go buy a number of RedHat Professional boxes to update our laboratory group's machines from SuSE 8.1. The cost of each was more than twice the cost of the "upgrade" to SuSE 8.2 (a full release as far as I can see), but since it was not out of my pocket and since support is important, reasoned I, it was the rational course. I am sure that I am not the only one. In my browsing I remember a post from a Mr. Dennis Nigbur, who got the full flame treatment. He was clearly a linux user, but after what he got from this list he will certainly not be buying from SuSE again. So I brought the RedHat DVD home to blow SuSE 8.2 away from my home machines. Then, I paused, recalling the pleasure of reading Miller's posts about Microsoft and recalling my gratitude for Mr. Ogley's updates to gnome packages. I decided to post this harangue first. Henry Harpending