Re: Posts to the mailing list - Broken reference headers

[Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>]

Quash this thread please, it threatens to become a long flame as everyone
wants to get their 2c in. References are not a required header, and will not
be a required header even when the draft standard is accepted. But they are a
good thing and people should get better mail clients. And world peace, that
would be nice too.

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <gaia@iki.fi> writes:

> On 20000923T180801+0200, Jens M|ller wrote:
> > Could those people who produce that postings please switch to a standard
> > compliant mail client.
> 
> Can you please identify which standard (Internet or otherwise) is being
> violated here?

There is no standard that requires In-Reply-To or References headers in mail.
In-Reply-To headers have never been standardized and are as good as useless.
There is a proposed standard that lists references as a SHOULD requirement:

 http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-drums-msg-fmt-09.txt

They are not required for discussion on debian lists, and good mail clients
are generally clever enough not to lose the thread of the discussion without
them. But they are a good thing in general.

Note that this is still a draft:

> Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months 
> and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any 
> time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material 
> or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
> 
> Note: Though this document uses the word "standard" in the body of the 
> text, it is of course still an Internet Draft and is NOT actually a 
> standard until it has been approved and published as an standards-track 
> RFC.

-- 
greg