hijacking threads

[Colin Law]

2009/11/16 Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au>:
> NoOp wrote:
>> > Hello back. *Please do not* hijack other's threads. Start your own,
>> > thank you.
>> >
>> OH!
>>
>> Sorry. I thought that I deleted all of the content for the existing
>> thread and made it a fresh blank email.
>
> If you reply to a message and then start talking about something
> completely different, people who were interested in the original subject
> will see your message (and all the replies to it!) as part of the thread
> they were interested in, even though your message (and all the replies
> to it) are NOT interesting to them. They end up having to read and
> discard messages that they would otherwise not have had to read at all -
> so it's a lot like spam.

I think what a lot of people do not realise (and it is not obvious to
those not in the know) that threading is not just a matter of subject
line.  The thread identification is also included in the headers.
This means that replying to an existing email, deleting the content,
and changing the subject line does not fully detach the mail from the
existing thread (though this does depend on ones mail reader I
believe).  Therefore when starting a new thread one should always
start a new email.  I hope I have got my facts right, I am not all
that knowledgeable in this area myself.

Colin