Using Gmail on Debian mailing lists [was Re: Plasma can be a lightweight]
On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 at 10:04, Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z
<santiagopinth@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z composed on 2021-03-10 14:59 (UTC-0400):
> > > I'm new to mailing lists. I didn't now you could link threads (it is
> > > threads, right?).
> > I really have no idea what this question is about.
> I mean, change the subject of the message for a specific conversation.
> But the email program recognizes the different subjects as different
> conversations.
While it looks like doing that works ok in Gmail, don't do that
because it is a lazy user-interface-design decision by Gmail that
is unpopular here because it actually causes problems for everyone else.
Gmail "conversations" are a thing that exists only in Gmail. They
are a broken simplification of threads that only compare the Subject
text and apparently ignore the actual threading of the message.
On Debian mailing lists, always use the Gmail compose window to
begin a new *thread*, and use Gmail "reply-to-all" to existing messages,
and also *remove* all individual recipients except the list unless they
have earlier written that they are not subscribed to the list, because that is
Debian mailing-list policy.
If you merely change the subject line in Gmail when replying, that does
*not* create a new thread, because even though it appears that way in Gmail it
does not appear that way to users of other email software. Sometimes,
doing that is a good idea when you want to indicate that the thread topic has
diverged without actually starting a new thread, but you should understand
that it does not create a new thread for most other people seeing your message.
In this message for example, the prior Subject has nothing to do with what
I am writing now, so it is appropriate for me to edit the subject,
and I have done that.
To see how messages are actually threaded on this list (which Gmail
does not bother to show you) you can look here:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/03/threads.html
You should be able to find this message there, and see how it is actually
still part of the prior thread. Even though it has a different subject and
to you in Gmail it looks like a different "conversation", to everyone else
it does not look like that.
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