tangled thread

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Thanks to Jim Warner for pointing out just how tangled they were.
There was a bug in the software that we have been using to present
the on-line discussions via the Web site.  As a result the "thread"
index didn't show messages in their logical threads.  Sometimes it
did, but half the time it organized things incorrectly.  Please
take another at these indices, which have been reconstructed after
the bug was fixed.  They provide a useful snapshot of the ongoing
discussion.

While I am talking about technicalities, I should mention a few
points related to this thread structure.  You have no doubt
noticed that messages from the list appear with a "From:" line
indicating the original sender.  This means that a simple reply
will send your response back to the sender alone.  If you want
to reply to the list as a whole, you can use a "group reply"
or "reply to all recipients" command.  The way this works is
that your mailer will pick up the "To:" line and the "Cc:" from
the original message, one of which will specify us-nd@info-ren.pitt.edu,
which is the address of the mailing list itself.

The thread index is constructed by looking to see if a given message
was issued through a reply command, as described above.  Typically,
the reply will use the same subject line as the original message,
prefixed by "Re:".  You can change the subject line in your reply,
perhaps to focus the discussion a little bit, but keep in mind
that any reply will show up in the same thread.  This means that
it can be confusing if you use a reply command just to avoid typing
the full address of the mailing list.

Thanks to Jim for pointing out this particular glitch, which must
have been bothering many of you, at least subliminally.  I know
that after Jim pointed out the problem I realized that the threads
had been looking weird, but somehow they hadn't been weird enough to
catch my attention.  Those of you with an eye for such things should
send notes to info@info-ren.pitt.edu if you spot other items that
need to be fixed.  Thanks for your help - and for your tolerance of
the occasional slip-up.

Bob Carlitz
Moderator

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