Netiquette (was: Draw/Vector (was Missing font/Impression))

In message <50c27b5ffasee.sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Russell Hafter News <see.sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In article <422575c250.jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Jim Nagel
<jimnewsm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

so what's the correct procedure now, so that the subject
line for replies to this message will indicate that
folks are no longer talking about "Draw/Vector", let
alone "Impression marvel&wonder" or "Missing font"?

Well, if it we me that was changing the subject, I would
start a new thread, copy the ols subject into the subect
line, surround it with brackets and insert 'was', and then
preceed it my new Subect.

As to the body, I would click reply on the e-mail I was
commenting on, then cut and paste from the 'reply' to my new
message window and then close the unwanted 'reply'.

But that is just what I would do.

Which creates a broken message. You reply to a message and quote part
of it, but you prevent your readers from navigating to the original
message easily because you deliberately break the link to it. Why
would that be a good idea? All that extra work just to stop things
from working the way they were designed to work?

Martin, I guess, would decide otherwise.

This is not a question of decisions, it is a question of the official
rules, which are called netiquette. The rules for threading and
quoting in newsgroups have been in place for decades. The rules for
this situation say: change the subject line (in the way you described
above) and keep thread references (which happens automatically when
you reply to a message). The reason is quite simply that I quote your
text, so the References list of my message must contain the id of your
message and that makes my message part of the thread.

That is very different from the typical newbie mistake where they try
creating a new thread by replying to an existing message, deleting all
the text and filling in a new subject. That is wrong because it
creates a reference to the original article even though the new one is
not related and does not quote from the other article.

Martin
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