[Rhodes22-list] What's a Thread?

[Peter Nyberg]

Roger,

I've observed some behavior of Pipermail, and drawn some conclusions, but I don't have access to source code, or even documentation.

>From what I've seen, if Pipermail determines that a newly received email is a reply to an older email already in the archives, it will put the new email in the same thread as the older email. (A Pipermail thread can actually have a tree structure. In this case Pipermail will put the new email on the same branch of the thread as the older email.)

It seems clear that Pipermail does not use either the subject line or the contents of the email to determine if one email is a reply to another, so I assume it uses information in the unseen header data.

If Pipermail determines that a new email is NOT a reply to an older email, then the new email becomes the start of a new thread.

To make your response to Wilson part of the 'Go Faster' thread, find an old email from the 'Go Faster' thread in your inbox, create a reply to that email, delete the original contents, insert your response text, change the subject to something appropriate (or leave it as is), and send it.

I think that would be a worthwhile experiment.

--Peter

> On 2021-10-21, at 08:33:13 EDT, ROGER PIHLAJA wrote:
>
> Peter,
> 
> I will try to keep all this in mind when I respond to a question.  It’s a shame 
> there is no way to move something if it gets misclassified though. 
> 
> What if the new thread were input with the old subject line where it was more 
> appropriate and searchable?  Would Pipermail see the new date and start a new 
> thread?  For example, what would happen if I were to repost my response to 
> Wilson’s “First Time” as “Go Faster”.  Would it end up in the archives as 
> somehow associated with and therefore searchable with the original “Go Faster” 
> thread? 
> 
> Roger Pihlaja
> S/V Dynamic Equilibrium
>