Summary: please avoid using "reply" to post a new subject.

Maximise your chances of getting a solution from the PIClist ...

Avoid totally changing the subject line.
It can lead to your message being ignored by hundreds of people.

Mail software uses a special field in the envelope called "References",
which points to the message that was being replied to.  Most mail
programs then allow the messages to be treated as a "thread", a linked
chain of messages, and can display them like this ...

Feb 02 JB               saving/restoring state information
Feb 03 Tony Nixon       +->
Feb 03 Robert Rolf      | +->
Feb 03 James Newton     |   +->
Feb 03 Rich Leggitt     |   +->
Feb 04 Paul B. Webster  |     +->
Feb 02 Dennis Gearon    +->

In English, this means that JB asked something, Tony and Dennis replied
to JB's message, Robert replied to Tony's, James and Rich replied to
Robert's, and Paul came in later with a reply to Rich's.  The references
can also be cumulative, including multiple previous message ids.

This is fantastic!  It means you can track the context of the
discussion very easily.  You can tell if people have followed the whole
thread before adding their bit.

You can also skip the entire "thread", often with just one key.
Many people do, as it is a high volume list.  But, there's a problem.

On some systems it is easier to reply to a message in order to
post a new one, rather than post a new message and find the list
address.  Quite a few people do so.  Here is an example;

Feb 02 Gary Tompkins    Roll Over and Play Dead
Feb 03 Tony Nixon       +->
Feb 02 Quitt, Walter    +*>
Feb 03 Tony Nixon       | +->
Feb 02 Lorick           |   +->Using more than one A/D channel on
Feb 03 Tony Nixon       |     +->
Feb 02 Lorick           |       +->
Feb 03 Tony Nixon       |         +->
Feb 03 Tony Nixon       |           +->
Feb 03 Lorick           |           +->
Feb 02 Brian Aase       +->Re: Roll Over and Play Dead

In this case, Lorick's message has a completely new subject, but has a
"References" header which claims it is a reply to Tony's second message.

However, the message is clearly a new topic and thread altogether.

Not all mail software uses references; some try to use just subject,
and some use both.  Some software can be reconfigured to use different
heuristics.  Generally though, most messages have a references.
Walter's message in the thread above was apparently without one.

I realise the chances of my changing this behaviour are pretty small,
but I think you ought to know it happens.  In this case, we can see that
Lorick was probably reading a thread of messages when they decided to
post a new one.  That can actually be useful information.  ;-)

--
James Cameron   mailto:quozl@us.netrek.org   http://quozl.us.netrek.org/