hijacking threads

[Karl Auer]

NoOp wrote:
> > Hello back. *Please do not* hijack other's threads. Start your own,
> > thank you.
> >   
> OH!
> 
> Sorry. I thought that I deleted all of the content for the existing 
> thread and made it a fresh blank email.

If you reply to a message and then start talking about something
completely different, people who were interested in the original subject
will see your message (and all the replies to it!) as part of the thread
they were interested in, even though your message (and all the replies
to it) are NOT interesting to them. They end up having to read and
discard messages that they would otherwise not have had to read at all -
so it's a lot like spam.

On the other hand, your own topic is not getting the attention you might
wish it to. It is under an inappropriate subject line, so people won't
know what you are talking about. Your messages (and all replies to it)
will be buried in the wrong thread, too.

And of course the local net.cops will land on you like a ton of
bricks :-) So nobody wins.
 
The usual reason for hijacking a thread is that the hijacker wants to
reply to the sender address of an email. In most GUI mailers (such as
evolution, and very probably thunderbird), this can be done quite easily
by clicking on the displayed sender address instead of clicking "reply"
- so it's still just one click.

The clue is in the subject line: Unless you want to contribute to that
subject, DO NOT USE REPLY.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)

GPG fingerprint: 07F3 1DF9 9D45 8BCD 7DD5 00CE 4A44 6A03 F43A 7DEF

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