Two naive questions

[Brian Inglis]

On 2020-04-20 11:20, Stephen Carrier wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 12:44:30PM -0600, Brian Inglis wrote:
>> On 2020-04-17 12:16, Andrey Repin wrote:
>>> Greetings, Stephen Carrier!
>>>> I remember having had the same confusion the first few times I initiated
>>>> threads.
>>
>>> When you start a new thread, do not reply to existing threads.
>>> It's that simple.
>>
>> Indeed - proper mail and news readers use References not Subject headers for
>> threading when available, so your new topic will be lost under an old thread.
> 
> I think the OP's first question was asking how to effectively join
> an existing thread when one is browsing the recent archives and not
> subscribed to the list.

As the next response and his reply make clear, he was asking about preperly
replying after subscribing.

> Joining the list after seeing a question one would like to answer
> doesn't help, because the message you would like to respond to has
> already gone by.
> 
> I think a good solution would be to get the message number from the web
> archive and request that a particular message be sent to you.  Then you
> could respond to that message and join the thread properly.
> 
> However, there doesn't seem to be a way to do that.  I used to be notified
> how to retrieve messages I had missed (due to bouncing) but the method
> did not work.  Furthermore, the mailman faq doesn't mention any way to
> do this.

The new server ml archive does not seem to offer the metadata available on the
previous server and archive, and that is true of most archives that do not allow
replies: probably a good way to reduce space required by 50-90%, from what I can
see.
A subscribed user could provide you with the reply References header values.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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