[ntp:questions] Threading test

Per Hedeland per at hedeland.org
Wed Mar 16 07:28:17 UTC 2005


In article <mailman.11.1110946327.588.questions at lists.ntp.isc.org> Steve
Kostecke <kostecke at ntp.isc.org> writes:
>
>Steve Kostecke said:
>
>>Message one to start the thread.
>
>This is message two. It was posted via the gateway.
>
>I manually added the References: header in an attempt to prevent a
>thread break.

I'm not sure exactly what your testing is supposed to achieve (but I do
think that we should try to avoid a flood of test posts to the group:-).

Obviously it isn't realistic to expect users to manually add References
headers, and whether they do or not is irrelevant to the mailman
gatewaying issue - the thread breakage it causes is primarily due to the
mailing list users replying to messages that have a Message-ID that
doesn't exist on the Usenet side (because it was replaced by mailman) -
i.e. neither they nor their MUA can construct a References header that
will work on the Usenet side based on the message they are replying to.

As you are replying to a message that was posted directly to the
newsgroup, not gatewayed *from* the mailing list, there is no Message-ID
munging coming into play for as far as the followup functionality goes -
and your MUA *could* have constructed a proper References header all by
itself.

Your MUA may not add a References header on replies, and it can't really
be faulted for that - it does however add an In-Reply-To header:

>In-reply-to: Your message of "16 Mar 2005 03:32:57 GMT."
>	<slrnd3fa79.5mn.kostecke at stasis.kostecke.net>

As you can see, it would be quite trivial for the gateway to construct a
References header from this. I beleive MUAs that add neither References
nor In-Reply-To (with mention of the Message-ID) are pretty rare these
days - but their existence and the resulting "disconnected" posts is
something you have to accept for any mail->news gateway, there's no way
the gateway can "fix" such messages.

--Per Hedeland
per at hedeland.org



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