I’ve seen complaints about thread hijacking but I always see them as different threads in my mail client. (Gmail) should I be using different software to subscribe to the list I think I’ve replied to them (threadjacks) a few times :S
Wes
META – Thread Hijacking
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Wesley,
As Chuck points out, lots of mail readers have started using only the message subject as the thread identifier. This isn’t really a good idea because sometimes the subject changes (because someone corrects a spelling mistake, or the subject becomes “RE: [whatever]” or “AW: [whatever]” or modified in some other way) and not all messages with the same subject (“i needz teh helpzorz”) are necessarily related.
My mail reader, Mozilla Thunderbird, (used to?) defaults to this message-subject-is-thread-id behavior. I decided to disable it and have tb follow the SMTP header that was designed to maintain message thread identity. (It looks like the “right” way is now the default. I was sure I had to change it. Oh well.)
In the end, it’s mostly up to the user’s own personal preference which way things should go. Those of us whose mail clients respect the thread-id in the SMTP headers can see immediately when someone hijacks a thread. Those folks have nowhere to hide: the SMTP headers do not lie.
- -chris
In that case the answer is yes. I should read this in a threaded client.