[OS X TeX] "Hijacking" a thread

[Alain Schremmer]

On Nov 4, 2008, at 2:04 AM, Christopher Menzel wrote:

> Joseph C. Slater wrote:
>> Seriously. Stop using this thread. Start a new one. Sent an email  
>> to macosx-tex at email.esm.psu.edu to start one. I'll even start it  
>> for you.
>
> Well, maybe I'm more clueless than most, but I didn't have even an  
> inkling that Joseph Slater's curt message was targeting me until he  
> made an example of me (and also falsely accused me of top-posting  
> -- the ignominy!).  On the off chance that others might be equally  
> clueless, and as penance for my transgressions, let me use my  
> breach of netiquette as a "teaching moment" instead of a mere  
> object of scorn: To "hijack" a thread is to start what you *think*  
> is a new thread by *replying* to a message in an existing thread  
> and changing the Subject header instead of beginning a new message  
> that you explicitly address to the list yourself.  You might think  
> (as I did) that these are two paths to the same end, but the  
> problem is that, when you reply to a message in an existing thread,  
> an identifier is preserved in your message (in the usually hidden  
> "In-Reply-To" header) that points to the replied-to message, and  
> this identifier is used by mail clients capable of subject  
> threading (as most are) to reconstruct threads.  Hence, if you try  
> to start a new thread by replying to a message in an existing  
> thread, even if you supply a new Subject header, you succeed only  
> in super-gluing your completely irrelevant message, and all  
> followups to that message, to the existing thread -- the thread has  
> been hijacked.  Note this also affects the list archives, as the In- 
> Reply-To headers are used to construct threads for the archives as  
> well.
>
> I hope that's helpful to some folks.

Guilty as charged. In fact, I am a repeat offender.

But why would an identifier be hidden?

Apologetic regards
--schremmer