A reason for threading errors in Mail.app

[Dennis Brown]

On Jun 15, 2005, at 6:35 AM, Alex Tweedly wrote:

> James Richards wrote:
>
>> Secondly, I had always previously understood the instruction about  
>> starting new topics to mean that I should no start an interesting  
>> discussion about global variables under a subject line referring  
>> to mail threading, but should change the subject line to match the  
>> discussion.  I can't be the only person who uses the 'Reply'  
>> command to get a new message all set up and then edits the subject  
>> line to reflect the topic.  Indeed I do this all the time since  
>> any attempt to reply to the digest (even on an existing topic)  
>> always produces a 'Re: use-revolution Digest, Vol ##, Issue ##'  
>> subject.
>>
>>
> For most people, the only advantage of using Reply rather than New  
> Message (or equivalent command/buttons) is that it fills in the  
> destination address. Most modern mail clients allow some form of  
> "address completion" so (for me), a new reply involves typing 4  
> extra characters "H" "o" "w" TAB

Once I realized the trouble I was causing myself and others by  
starting a new topic by replying to an unrelated topic and then  
editing the subject line, I stopped that practice at once.

I find that it is really no problem to start a new message, then drag  
and drop, or copy/paste the to: address from another message in OS X  
Mail.app.  It only saved about two mouse clicks to do it the lazy  
reply way.

I HOPE OTHERS GET THE HINT!

I can tell who does it the lazy reply way, because theirs is the  
first unrelated message added to a thread I am keeping.

Unless people object strongly, I may send out occasional private  
reminder messages to folks who are unaware of the threading trouble  
this causes some of us who are keeping some of these threads locally.

Dennis