From: Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com)
Date: Tue May 06 2003 - 19:00:46 CDT
> Except, by definition, the thread is not dependent upon the Subject
> header, it is defined by the References header. It is incumbent upon
> the poster to correctly indicate a new thread, if that is what they
> truly want to start. They do that not just by changing the subject,
> but by telling their agent that this is a new thread and not a
> followup -- or by removing the References by hand.
In many newsgroups, threads mutate. That isn't considered the start
of a new thread, but a change in direction of a branch of an existing
thread. The best (only) way to indicate that properly is to change
the Subject: header while leaving the References in.
It's up to the user agent how to display that.
> In addition, just changing the subject header does not imply that the
> topic has changed. People change subjects without changing topics,
> sometimes just to fix spelling errors, or to negate an opinion stated in
> that subject.
Unfortunately, there's no way to distinguish that from a wandering
subthread. I don't think we want to go there, anyway.
Seth