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Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 16:21:18 -0500 (EST)
From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu>
Reply-To: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu>
To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
cc: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com>, jmb@freefall.freebsd.org,
        langfod@dihelix.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: Cool Web page interface to mail + search engine?
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On Tue, 25 Mar 1997, Terry Lambert wrote:

> Then riddle me this:
> 
> How can I reply to a message with a date stamp earlier than the
> original message?
> 
> It seems to me that threading would be implicit.

Topic drift is a common occurence.  A collection of messages
sharing a subject line and temporal proximity may, in time,
become very distinct threads, although they share a common
origin.  Subject and date stamps can ensure correct absolute
ordering but in numerous cases, the threading quality will be
abysmal. 

There are two problems in threading: determing what thread a
message belongs to and correctly positioning the message in the
thread.  With reliable In-Reply-To fields, date and subject are
more or less irrelevant for both problems.  Without reliable
In-Reply-To fields, guess work with dates and subjects is about
the best you can do.

Many messages have reliable In-Reply-To fields, but enough don't
that the best possible solution will need to use all three bits
of information (message id, date, subject).

-john