Mailing List Don’t Do: Message Recycling

Here is a quick introduction to explain ‘Message Recycling’ in the context of e-mail discussion lists. Most people new to the concept of e-mail discussion lists (though not new to the concept of e-mail, usually) tend to overlook the (usually unsaid) rule of e-mail discussion lists - Don’t Recycle Messages. Probably this write-up with some examples would help them understand why Message Recycling is undesired by most.

Note: The mailing list exemplified via highlighted messages (yes, these are real-life examples) here is the linux-bangalore-programming mailing list (a popular mailing list involving people from the Bangalore Linux User Group and outside too.) Its list of rules includes one related to Message Recyling.

The Normal View

This is the ‘normal’ view of a mailing list’s messages - you would find this style in most e-mail clients, and also when using a webmail interface.

The Threaded View

In recent years, desktop (mainly) e-mail clients have improvised a lot, and one of the newer ways to view/read e-mail discussions is the Threaded View. Many people have started utilizing this, since it facilitates identifying all the messages belonging to a particular discussion, and specifically who-replied-whom.

Note the ‘+’ and ‘-’ boxes against each thread. The user can expand threads to be viewed, and keep others closed.

Usually, e-mail clients track e-mail headers that indicate the ‘parent’ of a message - that is, the original message to which the sender of current message replied to. These are usually the ‘References’ and ‘In-Reply-To’ headers. More technically inclined users can read more about these here.

Posting

Now if you have to post a new message to the mailing list - unrelated to all the various discussions going on (not off-topic to the mailing list though), you should ‘Compose’ / ‘Write’ a new e-mail with the requisite text and type in (or copy and paste) the posting-address of the mailing list, before sending it.

Message Recycling

However, call it ‘convenience’ or just ‘lazy bum’ behavior, some would just hit ‘Reply’ button on an existing post, change the Subject (after all, it’s *your* thread), write in the text, and ‘Send’ it. This is called Message Recycling. Apart from other things, your e-mail client will attach a Header Field to the e-mail indicating which original post you responded to.

Remember (as mentioned above) that e-mail clients track message headers to display the mailing list conversations in a threaded manner. So, this is how the threads will look due to this Message Recycling.

If you notice, the unread message in bold above does not belong to that thread, but due to the ‘Reply‘ by the sender, all recipients of this message get an indication that it does. Needless to say, it may cause confusion and inconvenience to many members of the list who view the messages in a Threaded manner.
Worse, it may mean many members of the mailing list may not even look at the message any time soon. They may not read most posts belonging to that thread, because the context does not interest them, or is plain boring.

If the thread remains closed, the “new post” (Recycled Message) would remain hidden from users - this would not be what the sender of the ‘Recycled Message’ intended.

So, be careful. Don’t ‘recycle’ messages, instead use shortcuts or Address Book to fill the posting address of a mailing list if it is long or difficult to remember. Worst case, your subscription to the mailing list may be suspended for such behavior if the list administrators take a strong view in this regard.

Another Note: It is not the intention of this write-up to target any particular sender of the messages shown in examples above. Message Recycling occurs in many popular mailing lists, mostly due to the fact that senders do not understand the implications of doing it. This write-up is an attempt to eliminate that reason (the ‘not understanding’ part, not the ’senders’ ).

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Links
1. http://cr.yp.to/immhf/thread.html - explanation of ‘References’ and ‘In-Reply-To’ mail headers

Author
Manish Malik

Changelog
16 Apr 2006: Updated a couple of hyperlinks that had gone stale. No change to article content.
01 Nov 2004: Added link/note for explanation of the headers. Rephrased some sentences.
17 Sep 2004: Created the document

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