[buug] mail threading [Was: Iceweasel / Firefox]

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Zeke Krahlin (pewterbot9 at gmail.com):

> Rick, I don't expect you to reply further, as you don't care to waste
> your time with gmail crap. if Ian would be so kind as to respond, that
> would be good.

No problem.  Just one thing that caught my eye:

[...]
> And it also seems rather disingenuous and hypocrticial to moan over
> broken threads, when there's not a peep over non-trimming quotes,
> reposting the same thread over and over again, in each message.

I think many old-timers simply got tired of being yelled back at 
for trying to assert netiquette standards in public, no matter how
politely.  Speaking for myself, I long ago gave up on even trying, and
instead take technical measures at _my_ end to try to retroactively 
fix defective postings I receive.

E.g., HTML-only postings are piped through w3m, such that I'm usually
only barely aware that the poster didn't use plaintext, and my MUA 
displays only the plaintext half of "multipart-alternative" posts,
my pager rewraps postings with paragraph-long lines with no hard
returns, etc.

If I were better at sed and awk, I'd write a re-quoting utility that 
automatically reformatted postings written in corporate style with
quotation of the entire preceding thread, newest on top and every single
preceding post beneath it.  That would be cool.  The point is that
netiquette faux pas that you can make transparently vanish through
technical means are ones you won't even see, and won't be bothered by.

I don't find it disingenuous and hypocritical to see a member of the 
traditional Internet culture suddenly express annoyance over one failure
to correctly uphold standards after holding his peace about many others.
Rather, I find it quite understandable.