Subject: Re: IMAP definitions on threading

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 16:35:54 -0700 (PDT)

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Your particular words that I found too strong were:

>>    Threading on Subject does not exist. 

??? Too strong? Please.  

>I pointed to the particular IMAP draft as an example of a person using the 
>word "threading" to describe something very like what you don't want to 
>call "threading".

We already have examples of people calling it "threading". We also have 
examples of why it really isn't threading. 

>Your problem. But your claim that this definition is "the truth" is too 
>strong for my taste.

The solution is simple. Answer either or both of the questions I presented
with the correct threading as determined by the Subject header and 
disprove my reading of the RFC. That you did not (and I maintain you 
cannot) is sufficient to indicate that threading is not possible with the 
Subject header, and thus "threading by subject" does not exist as such. 

I am at a loss as to why people care so much about not being correct to
call their sorting algorithm "threading", when the final result is exactly
the same. The only difference is that they don't mislead naive users into
thinking their presentation order has any physical reality behind it when 
they admit they just sort by subject, and they do mislead them when they
claim they can determine threading by subject.

Perhaps the problem is that you think of threads as "lumps of articles"  
and not the more realistic "group of articles with a defined hierarchical
relationship"? And that lumping articles together by similar subject is
"close enough", when you don't care what the hierarchical relationship is?
I think current usage of thread is certainly not just "lump", but how
articles are "strung together" -- and that's why "thread" is used instead
of "lump". But even for the "lump", the Subject header just doesn't
contain the necessary information, so even "lumping" by Subject isn't
really possible.

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 13:30:04 GMT

>contain the necessary information, so even "lumping" by Subject isn't

I move that all occurrences of the word "threading" in our drafts be
replaced with the word "lumping".

:-)

-- 
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