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

[Hosnieh Rafiee]

Hi Mark,

I have tried even to forward and reply (change the sender to myself) of another message to myself. The header did not contain any reply to. Whatever happens is in IETF part and not the MUA in my side.

But in any case, I have started a new message. My message did not have any similarities to the other message except, it might be a word "privacy" in subject or content. Besides that there was no similarity.

Best,
Hosnieh

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Sapiro [mailto:mark at msapiro.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2014 2:02 AM
> To: Daniel Kahn Gillmor; mailman developers list
> Cc: Hosnieh Rafiee
> Subject: Re: [Mailman-Developers] Mailman introducing spurious
> References: or In-Reply-To: headers?
> 
> 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