Hi!

John Vertical writes:
> >Philip Newton writes:
> > >...
> > > (Not to mention that my Usenet client does threading, whereas most
> > > forums I've seen don't -- they just dump entire conversations into one
> > > window, much like Gmail, without making it clear who replied to whom.)
> >
> >And the confusing thing is that in contrast to mails where the correct
> >threading depends on correct mail client implementations (References
> >an In-Reply-To headers) and subject lines etc., which all tend to be
> >partially broken, any forum software has ultimate knowledge about the
> >threading because all replies are under its own control.  Absurd.
> >
> >**Henrik
>
> I may be missing something here, but what the heck are you talking
> about? I haven't seen a single online forum that would jumble all
> messages together -
> everything *must* be in a thred. Or is it thred-internal organization
> you're after?

Yes.  Fully recursive threading is what I was after.

> I'm not sure if that's feasible in forums, but not really on mailing
> lists either, since it's commonplace to reply to more than one
> person, or point, in a single post, and there's 99% of the time a
> general "reply" option in addition to all the "quote" options
> anyway.

Ah, indeed.  This might be different if there *were* full threading.
Well, I am not saying it does not exist, only not commonly -- I have
seen full threading in Web-based system (I think Slashdot has it).

> In forums where going off topic (which isn't actually even a
> prerequisite for composite replies) is scowled on, peeps just start
> new threds when needed.

Sure, this is good behaviour.  What is also good about Web-based
systems is that a past can be moved to a new thread afterwards, so a
moderator can try to resolve confusion.  This is not possible with
mailing lists.

>...
> Maybe it's just user culture differences at play here.

Well, not 'just', but 'also' that's for sure.

**Henrik