Allegedly, on or about 27 November 2013, David sent:
As I said... Me - The ordinary user that uses an Email Client has no problems with what AP and Gmail is/are doing. His posts, for me fall in the proper place in the thread(s) on this list.
So that means?? Maybe you 'Linux geeks' with your 'fancy Linux Geek stuff' running have made this a problem? For you. :-)
Linux (geeks) has/have a tendency to take simple things, that work for most, and then those Linux Geeks take it to the point that it no longer works? <BIG grin>
My take on your response would be that you probably are not "threading" messages, merely "sorting" by subject. Which is an entirely different thing. There are a number of things wrong with that approach, chief in my mind are that:
1. You cannot easily follow an on-going thread when someone changes the subject line, yet it is still part of the same thread, even more so when it happens more than once. And, yes, changing the subject within a thread is sensible in some cases (e.g. "solved" cases). But mailing list servers that bung in [list name] into the subject line are a classic case of nuisance subject changes.
2. The sequence of replies to replies can't be accurately done without using threading headers, sorting by subject and date doesn't do it. This becomes important with protracted threads.
And I don't care whether *you* sort by threads, or not. Nor care whether you give a damn about threading. What I do care about is when people bugger up the ability for threading to work by using clients that mangle the headers.
Or let's put it another way. How long would it take you to get seriously inconvenienced if another header was destroyed? Such as all messages on this list having no subject line, at all, never mind the typical useless ones people write. It doesn't take much to mess things up.