On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 23:01 -0500, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
It works brilliantly when your mail (SMTP) or news (NNTP) reader tracks via 30+ year old Message-ID. That way you can thread dozens or even hundreds of follow-ups, even if the topic changes, while still allowing others to not have to read through dozens before getting to it.
Take the "Putting nat routing into place permanently thread" for example (just a few posts in): http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2005-November/thread.html
Look at all the changes in the discussion. By threading by Message-ID, the subject can be appended (or even pre-pended with the RE/WAS combo) and let browsers find the relevant section rather quickly.
And this was a _short_ thread. Imagine a much longer one! ;->
I receive more thanks from people who find my stuff buried in Google searches than I receive complaints from GMail users, so I continue to use the O'Reilly Guidelines.
BTW, I don't say that because of my ego or some @$$-covering move. Remember, it's much easier for me just to hit "reply" and not care. I literally get thanx for giving hints in a threaded archive for saving people a lot of time when they find discussions with me in a Google search.