On 7/28/2011 5:01 PM, Spiro Harvey wrote: >> the thing is that not all mail clients will set the in-reply-to >> headers, whuch is why clients like thunderbird, evolution and mutt >> will use the subject line as well to thread messages. > > Apple Mail does that too and it makes the threading unusable IMO. > > If the clients are too dumb to adhere to a convention, I don't believe > it's our job to baby them. > > Personally, I like the idea of the [SOLVED] tags because they can > indicate when help is no longer needed. > > However, I also like the way the Sun Managers list does (did? it's been > many years since I used it), but they basically said, post a question, > work it out, then post a new SOLVED thread outlining the solution. > > While that would probably be a bit too formal for this list, it was a > fantastic way of learning things. And having the solved thread made > searching through archives way easier. Find a problem related to yours, > then look for the SOLVED post. If you needed more detail, you went back > to the main thread and read all the posts to see how they came to that > conclusion. Heck, I'd settle for people coming back to a "problem / issue" thread and updating on how or what the actual problem was or what they did to get the thing to work properly. So often you'll see a thread talking about trying X, Y & Z, then the person having the problem never responds back as to whether X, Y or Z worked. Which is especially troublesome a year or two later when you're digging through threads in GMane trying to find a solution to a particular issue. (Pet peeve of the day -- dead end threads on mail lists.)