On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:40:47 -0700, aspasia wrote:


No, no. Same thread. Called "thread creep".

If you recall, the common factor was trying to get things done
inexpensively when you live in an expensive neighborhood.

(not that I do, but it was too expensive to repair a pipe.)

OK, got it -- but here's what I was taught:

Subject line would read:

Repair broken pipe [was: Replace dangerous side steps]

I used to do that. And when I change the subject line, I still do
that.

When I read mailing lists, people are always changing the subject line
and it is sometimes a big problem for me because Eudora doesn't sort
by recent thread, only by mailbox. So I almost never change subject
lines in email lists, or even personal correspondence, and that has
carried over to news, even though Agent does sort by thread.

That way people interested in the new subject can go right to it,

Maybe, maybe not. I use Agent, which is about as versatile as could
be, more versatile than any other new program I know, and even if on
occasion it's not, using it points out the issues.

Reading with Agent (which many people use) there are two choices,
1)Start a new thread when subject line changes, and
2)Don't start one when subject changes.

If you choose 2, there is no way to go right to it, because it appears
with all the others and they only have one entry, at the top, that
lists the subject. The entries below it don't give the subject.

If you choose 1, then the new thread starts at the very bottom of the
list, regardless of how far away from the original thread that was.

There were too many times when too many people changed the subject
line, often without even quoting the original subject, and I wanted to
go back to an earlier post in the thread, and couldn't find one.

So I chose 2 and that has solved 1's enormous problem, but it has the
problems I listed.

I've used Netscape a little for news, but not enough to see how it
works on this issue. I guess other news readers could keep a
multi-subject thread in one place, while listing the subject in the
table of contents every time it changed. Does any program do that?

and people interested in the old subject can bypass it. -- all
without breaking the thread.

Aspasia