--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > authfriend wrote: <snip> > >I'm not a programmer, but I've been participating > >in electronic forums, via BBSs, email, newsgroups, > >and on the Web for over 20 years, and I've never > >heard the term "thread hijacking" except from > >you. I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. > > > Here's more on the subject: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_Hijacking
But this isn't how you've defined it. You're all upset about the title changes, but Wikipedia's definition doesn't even mention title changes: "Thread hijacking is the act of taking a forum discussion thread off topic by discussing a subject entirely unrelated to the subject at hand. "While this can be an intentional act of trolling, it is often accidental - caused by other participants in the discussion responding to a throwaway remark, taking the thread off at a tangent to the original subject matter. The results, whilst often humourous, often extract a feeling of resentment from the author of the post." This is something people have done as long as I've been participating in electronic forums, and I've never seen anyone express resentment. It isn't even "accidental" per se (and in my experience it's rarely trolling). In any case, the two paragraphs are contradictory. It's one thing to go off on a tangent, and quite another to introduce "a subject entirely unrelated to the subject at hand." Now, notice what follows; changing the thread title is discussed as a special case: "Many people find that they are scolded on a list or newsgroup for thread hijacking despite the fact that they changed the subject line, which would seem to them to create a new thread. Most news and mail readers use other headers such as References: to track and build the thread of messages by message ID, and changing the subject line does not change the actual threading." So you're wrong to suggest that this only happens on Yahoo; as far as Wikipedia is concerned, it's standard. "Therefore, one should always compose a new (and therefore reference- free) message when changing topics. Alternatively one can start a new thread for the new topic and link to the previous thread." And how does one "link to the previous thread"? Maybe that was possible on old Usenet, although I never saw it mentioned and have no idea how it would have been done. In any case, I still think the "tree" structure is a good one in many cases. It works very well on Google, but Yahoo's new implementation of it is impenetrable (and its "Up thread" option simply doesn't work at all). Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_hijacking"; ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> See what's inside the new Yahoo! Groups email. http://us.click.yahoo.com/2pRQfA/bOaOAA/yQLSAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
