birding-aus

Replying and the archives - was RE: Help !

To: peter shute <>, <>, Aus Birding <>
Subject: Replying and the archives - was RE: Help !
From: Roaminoz Crew <>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:10:23 +1000

Thank you Peter



I can see now why NEW post topics must start from scratch.

I've saved the email address for new posts.



One question though ...

Replying to this email is it OK for me to delete all the message you have sent ?

or should I kept it in line with my reply above ?   Awkward but I think you will

know what I mean.    In this instance, I've left your reply below



Jude









> From: 
> To: ; ; 
> Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:57:38 +1100
> Subject: RE: [Birding-Aus] Replying and the archives - was RE: Help !
>
> Paul Dodd wrote on Friday, 29 January 2010 8:39 AM:
>
> > Most people select "Reply all" when replying to existing posts. The
> > main thing is that you include  in the list
> > of recipients if you wish your reply to appear in the mailing list.
> > Similarly, when writing a new post, make sure you send it to
> > 
>
> I made the point recently that when people using digest mode reply, they have 
> to manually create it, which breaks the threading shown in the archives. This 
> seems to have had a good reaction, and I'm glad to hear some people have 
> already swapped over from digest mode as a result. Another point worth noting 
> is that the reverse can happen - if you Reply All to a random message purely 
> to obtain the correct mailing address for a new thread, then the new thread 
> will be shown in the archives as being part of the chosen random thread.
>
> This appears to be a smaller problem than the broken threads, but it does 
> happen regularly and makes the archives harder to work with.
>
> It's well worth the trouble to add  to your address 
> book so you can easily start new threads from scratch.
>
> Just in case the word "thread" that has been bandied about is new for some 
> people, I'll explain what it means. If someone posts a message, and several 
> people reply about it, then several others reply to those replies, etc, the 
> resulting collection of postings about the same topic are often called a 
> thread. Threads are represented in the archives as a list of postings 
> arranged to show who replied to which prior posting. It does this by 
> arranging each posting under the posting it is a reply to, and indented a 
> little. Here's an example:
> http://bioacoustics.cse.unsw.edu.au/birding-aus/2010-01/msg00692.html
> If you scroll to the bottom of that page, you'll see a list of the first 22 
> postings in that thread.
>
> Computer geeks might call the way it displays the postings as a tree, others 
> might see it as a wiggly list.
>
> That thread listing shows how Clair started the recent thread about 
> birding-aus, then I and a few others replied, then Chris and Helen replied to 
> my reply, and others replied to their replies, etc. Unfortunately the 
> archives don't seem to be able to show the whole very long thread, you have 
> to click on Next in Thread to see more.
>
> Interestingly, you can see an example there of an unrelated reply where 
> Debbie appears to have replied to Trevor's posting to start a thread about 
> spotlighting. It hasn't indented Dave's reply properly under hers - I suspect 
> the archives won't show postings as being more than 4 levels deep. (Sorry to 
> name names, but it's impossible to show examples without doing so, and this 
> problem isn't common knowledge. Sadly, many of my early postings are 
> misthreaded like this.)
>
> A final example:
> http://bioacoustics.cse.unsw.edu.au/birding-aus/2010-01/msg00698.html
> This is where David created a new thread related to the forum thread by 
> creating an email from scratch instead of replying. Anyone using the thread 
> list to read through this stuff might miss these postings because they've 
> formed a separate thread, despite the subject line being similar. The 
> archives look at message-ids hidden in the email headers, not the subject 
> lines.
>
> Peter Shute

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