From: Eivind Tagseth (eivindt@multinet.no)
Date: Tue Aug 17 2004 - 02:31:56 CDT
* Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> [2004-08-16 19:07:55 -0400]:
> Here's an example of what I'm thinking, using most of your words:
> A message includes a References header if and only if it is a
> followup. A message which is related, supplementary, or posted to
> respond to another message should be a followup.
But this isn't how the References header works today:
A message which is related,
A messsage may be related to another message (i.e. it could talk about it
in the body of the article), but may be a part of a completely different
discussion, and should be threaded under that discussion, _not_ the discussion
that the related message belongs to.
supplementary,
Again, a message can supplement another message but still belong to a
different thread than the other message.
or posted to respond to another message
And I may even post a message to respond to another message, but still want
to start a new thread.
should be a followup.
What you have described is a mixup of See-Also, In-Reply-To and References.
The references header is used to indicate that a message belongs to the
same discussion as another set of messages, in a threaded order. Why
can't we keep it that simple?
Eivind