How to properly nest a response from Gmail
I am a new member of a Mailman list. This feels like a stupid question, but the other day I tried to respond to a message, and it did not nest properly. It nested at the same level as the post I was responding to, rather than under it (and this was not a case of nesting limit, as other message did nest at the depth I desired). I checked the "In-Reply-To" header on my sent mail and sure enough it as replying to the Message-ID of the email I wanted to nest under. And yet it did not. Any ideas?
BA lanfest wrote:
I assume by "nesting" you are referring to what I call "threading".
Are you talking about the threaded view in the Mailman archives of the list, or the "conversation" view in your own gmail folders?
If gmail, see the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/2IA9> and see <http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=5900> which may be relevant.
If Mailman's archives, there are various possibilities. One scenario is, e.g., you post, someone replies to you with Cc: to the list, you reply to the reply you receive directly and timing is such that your reply reaches the list before the first reply, your reply does not get threaded as a child of the first reply because the first reply wasn't there when your reply got threaded.
Another possibility is a reply get's sent to you and then resent to the list as a separate message. If you reply to the copy sent to you, your reply is not a reply to the message in the list archive so it isn't threaded as such.
Also, some Debian/Ubuntu Mailman packages contained a bad patch that caused messages with hyphens in their Message-Id: to be indented too much in the threaded archive index. This was never an issue with the source distribution, and the issue that the Debian patch was addressing was fixed in the source distribution as of Mailman 2.1.13.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
MUCH thanks for the reply Mark. I've been looking for help everywhere and yours is the first response I've received. I was referring to the archived view threading on the web.
Another possibility is a reply get's sent to you and then resent to the
I am pretty sure this is what happened. When I replied to the first message (which did not thread correctly), my subscription mode was digest only so I was not getting individual messages, but I did get a message in my inbox from the member I wanted to respond to, because he mailed me a separate copy. I replied to that, and I'm guessing like you said it had a different Message-ID.
Later I changed my subscription to non-digest mode, and then when I replied to one of those that I received (i.e. a message actually sent to the list and not just me), it did thread properly.
However, the absolute weirdest thing is this. Yesterday, I signed up for a few other lists to run some tests. One thing I tried was responding to an archive message straight from the web using the <a href="mailto:someone"> link at the top of a message (my browser is configured to compose a Gmail message when I click a link like that). The first thing I noticed was that even though that href link appears to ask your mail client to add an "In-Reply-To" header, Gmail does not actually recognize that request, and the Gmail message I sent to the list had no "In-Reply-To" header at all. However... the archive view STILL threaded my reply correctly, even without that header! So I went back to my "real list" and tried this same thing, and it did not in fact work on this list (using the web reply link). So.. I do know now how to get my responses to thread properly on my real list (I must have received a real copy in my inbox and reply to it from there), but it is more of an academic curiosity why on some other list I found, the threading still works even in the complete absence of "In-Reply-To" headers.
Thanks again.
On the "test list" I was using
Actually, scratch that last part about correct threading in the absence of "In-Reply-To" header. I just re-checked, and that was actually only threaded one level down, which was coincidentally the correct level, but is also where replies end up going even if they should be deeper, when missing the header. Sorry for the confusion, I think I have it all sorted out now! :-)
On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 12:19 PM, BA lanfest <ba.lan.fest.08@gmail.com>wrote:
BA lanfest wrote:
Bummer. Yet another thing to not like about gmail ...
(Above subsequently noted to not be completely correct)
Threading in Mailman's pipermail archive was designed to identify the parent of the current message as follows:
If the current message has an In-Reply-To: header, the parent is the message in the archive with Message-ID: = this message's In-Reply-To:, or if no such message exists, this message has no parent.
If the current message still has no parent, but it has a References: header, and one or more of the IDs in the References: header is = the Message-ID of a message in the archive, the parent of this message is the newest referenced message. If none of the referenced messages are in the archive, this message has no parent.
If the current message still has no parent, it's parent is the oldest message in the archive with a matching subject, if any.
In the above, "in the archive" really means in the archive for the current month or whatever the archive frequency is. Also, step 3), threading by subject, was broken prior to Mailman 2.1.14 and may still not be completely fixed. See <https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/266572>.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
BA lanfest wrote:
I assume by "nesting" you are referring to what I call "threading".
Are you talking about the threaded view in the Mailman archives of the list, or the "conversation" view in your own gmail folders?
If gmail, see the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/2IA9> and see <http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=5900> which may be relevant.
If Mailman's archives, there are various possibilities. One scenario is, e.g., you post, someone replies to you with Cc: to the list, you reply to the reply you receive directly and timing is such that your reply reaches the list before the first reply, your reply does not get threaded as a child of the first reply because the first reply wasn't there when your reply got threaded.
Another possibility is a reply get's sent to you and then resent to the list as a separate message. If you reply to the copy sent to you, your reply is not a reply to the message in the list archive so it isn't threaded as such.
Also, some Debian/Ubuntu Mailman packages contained a bad patch that caused messages with hyphens in their Message-Id: to be indented too much in the threaded archive index. This was never an issue with the source distribution, and the issue that the Debian patch was addressing was fixed in the source distribution as of Mailman 2.1.13.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
MUCH thanks for the reply Mark. I've been looking for help everywhere and yours is the first response I've received. I was referring to the archived view threading on the web.
Another possibility is a reply get's sent to you and then resent to the
I am pretty sure this is what happened. When I replied to the first message (which did not thread correctly), my subscription mode was digest only so I was not getting individual messages, but I did get a message in my inbox from the member I wanted to respond to, because he mailed me a separate copy. I replied to that, and I'm guessing like you said it had a different Message-ID.
Later I changed my subscription to non-digest mode, and then when I replied to one of those that I received (i.e. a message actually sent to the list and not just me), it did thread properly.
However, the absolute weirdest thing is this. Yesterday, I signed up for a few other lists to run some tests. One thing I tried was responding to an archive message straight from the web using the <a href="mailto:someone"> link at the top of a message (my browser is configured to compose a Gmail message when I click a link like that). The first thing I noticed was that even though that href link appears to ask your mail client to add an "In-Reply-To" header, Gmail does not actually recognize that request, and the Gmail message I sent to the list had no "In-Reply-To" header at all. However... the archive view STILL threaded my reply correctly, even without that header! So I went back to my "real list" and tried this same thing, and it did not in fact work on this list (using the web reply link). So.. I do know now how to get my responses to thread properly on my real list (I must have received a real copy in my inbox and reply to it from there), but it is more of an academic curiosity why on some other list I found, the threading still works even in the complete absence of "In-Reply-To" headers.
Thanks again.
On the "test list" I was using
Actually, scratch that last part about correct threading in the absence of "In-Reply-To" header. I just re-checked, and that was actually only threaded one level down, which was coincidentally the correct level, but is also where replies end up going even if they should be deeper, when missing the header. Sorry for the confusion, I think I have it all sorted out now! :-)
On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 12:19 PM, BA lanfest <ba.lan.fest.08@gmail.com>wrote:
BA lanfest wrote:
Bummer. Yet another thing to not like about gmail ...
(Above subsequently noted to not be completely correct)
Threading in Mailman's pipermail archive was designed to identify the parent of the current message as follows:
If the current message has an In-Reply-To: header, the parent is the message in the archive with Message-ID: = this message's In-Reply-To:, or if no such message exists, this message has no parent.
If the current message still has no parent, but it has a References: header, and one or more of the IDs in the References: header is = the Message-ID of a message in the archive, the parent of this message is the newest referenced message. If none of the referenced messages are in the archive, this message has no parent.
If the current message still has no parent, it's parent is the oldest message in the archive with a matching subject, if any.
In the above, "in the archive" really means in the archive for the current month or whatever the archive frequency is. Also, step 3), threading by subject, was broken prior to Mailman 2.1.14 and may still not be completely fixed. See <https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/266572>.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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