[Mailman-Developers] Mailman introducing spurious References: or In-Reply-To: headers?

[Mark Sapiro]

On 10/27/2014 11:33 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:

> Mailman's pipermail archiver makes use of these headers in determining
> threading in its archives, but it neither adds nor removes them or
> anything from them and anything it does has no effect on delivered
> messages in any case.


I subsequently noticed in the message attached to the original post in
this thread

On 10/27/2014 03:12 AM, Hosnieh Rafiee wrote:
...
> No not always. I saw a lot of such misleading information by mailman before in other groups as well. 
> 
> It appears that mailman uses a fuzzy approach and if the subject line has any similar words to the subject line of the previous thread, it categorized it under the same thread. 
> 
> As I said I have started a completely new message. So the header of my message was quite new and not carry any information for the old thread.
> 
> For instance this one is another example of such problem. Y
> [dns-privacy] Authenticating the resolver, Paul Hoffman
> Re: [dns-privacy] Authenticating the resolver, Wes Hardaker
> Re: [dns-privacy] Authenticating the resolver, Paul Hoffman


As I wrote, Mailman makes use of In-Reply-To: and References: headers in
determining threading in pipermail archives. It also does some Subject:
header matching to augment threading decisions although not nearly as
cavalier as "any similar words to the subject line of the previous
thread", so unrelated posts can be threaded together in the archives,
but this most often if not always occurs when something is posted as a
reply to an unrelated post and thus is sent to Mailman with In-Reply-To:
and/or References: referring to the unrelated thread.

In any case, as I said previously, Mailman does not ever add
In-Reply-To: or References: headers to messages which it delivers.

If Hosnieh Rafiee's statement "I have started a completely new message.
So the header of my message was quite new and not carry any information
for the old thread." is correct and if his delivered post contained
In-Reply-To: and References: headers referencing the old thread, I can
only imagine that perhaps his own MUA was responsible in some way or
possibly some non-Mailman process or Mailman modification is involved on
the Mailman host that added them, but I'm certain that standard Mailman
does not.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan

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