On Wednesday 23 April 2003 21:03, Vince Littler wrote: <snip>
My own take on this is that although the infrastructure is in place, the threading feature is not sufficiently mature for anything other than voluntary use because: 1] there is not sufficient agreement on the application of the feature [eg the issues raised by Anders] 2] hence there is no actual standard in place 3] hence there is no client support for a threading standard, particularly at the sending end [eg 'reply to current thread' and 'reply to new thread'].
Now, if _all_ these issues were sorted out, I would feel that barking at newbies for violation of thread integrity would be justified. But let's face it, on the majority of clients there is no button to press or drop down dialog or anything to see what thread you are on or change it in any way - the user only has the reply button and the 'subject' fields to play with - I know, you told me how to do this - it is easy, but it is far from obvious.
I disagree there. First, I would consider a decade or so of use to be "sufficiently mature". There *are* applications (i.e. mail readers the implement this feature and the fact that some applications do not take advantage of this feature does not mean the feature is not standardized. Should we all ingore HTML standards on our web pages simply because they are not implemented by Microsoft? Also there **is** support for threading on the client end. My email reader (Kmail) **does** support it. I can group my email messages by thread, as well as collapse or expand those threads. When I click "reply" or some variant, my email client rightly assumes that this is a continuation of the same conversation. If not, I click "Post to mailing-list" and it creats a brand new message which is independant of the orignal thread. I am certain that many of the email clients other people use have similar features. Just because they are not labled 'reply to current thread' and 'reply to new thread' does not negate them. In fact, in my mind having different labels confirms the "rightness" of them. You *reply* to the *same* thread, you *post* a *new* thread. Vince, if it were obvious then I wouldn't have needed to point it out. Since many people do not use threaded readers they obviously do not *see* the benefits of threaded messages. That's why I pointed it out and explained what it means (and I really don't see how my post was "barking").
In other words, the problem is _not_ a User problem, it is a User Interface problem. As such, I think the constructive place for addressing the problem is with 1] 2] and 3] above. The hardest part is 1], but with this, 2] could be easy and a selection of clients supporting 3] would be totally possible. Until then, perfect threading will surely be a dream.
Actually I do see it as a *user* problem because there are "User Interfaces" that behave like you suggest. For those that do not use a thread-capable reader, it is up to them to make the extra step and avoid simply reaplying.
<WordsThatWillHauntMeMode=ON> And if Linux flourishes the way we would all wish, we are going to see some newbie top posters who are into some very Microsoftish ways... <WordsThatWillHauntMeMode=OFF>
That's why I try to avoid sugarcoating things. I am not going to gloss over the fact that there are some people who take will ignore others who do not follow accepted standards. This is true not only for mailing lists, but for the world in general. There is no law written or otherwise, that say you should not interrupt someone while they are talking. It is just an "accepted standard". Regards, jimmo -- --------------------------------------- "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden --------------------------------------- Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info --------------------------------------- NOTE: All messages sent to me in response to my posts to newsgroups, mailing lists or forums are subject to reposting.