Why is the result after this function is called like this?

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15

And again Discourse eats my email :frowning: I am reduced to using the web forum, how crude.

Let’s try for a third time; here’s my second attempt from the email:

Indeed. I had a heap of stuff in there. I usually use the markdown
indent-4-spaces for this, but Discourse is extremely agressive in
mangling inbound email posts. You can see I’ve altered my attribution
line above from the normal convention because Discourse was eating those (and below) also.

Let’s try that again, using backticks…

Let’s take this message of yours to which I’m replying. Amongst its
headers are these:

Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2022 22:54:16 +0000
From: "C.A.M. Gerlach via Discussions on Python.org" <notifications@python1.discoursemail.com>
Subject: [Py] [Users] Why is the result after this function is called like this?
To: cs@cskk.id.au
Message-ID: <topic/14680/51080.c10d6dc3ade4bb10054c3983@discuss.python.org>
In-Reply-To: <YkOHlzi270l8fQMv@cskk.homeip.net>
References: <topic/14680@discuss.python.org> <YkOHlzi270l8fQMv@cskk.homeip.net> <20220329083928.GX8276@ando.pearwood.info>
Delivered-To: cs@cskk.id.au
Reply-To: "Discussions on Python.org" <incoming+f96b28c86ef0bc2a400f14b8379d85a8@python1.discoursemail.com>

The To: comes from discourse’s delivery to me. The Message-ID: comes
from discourse. The In-Reply-To: comes from my original message to
which you’re replying. And the References: contains message-ids for:

  • the topic (the root post probably)
  • my message (because you’re replying to me?)
  • Steven’s message (because you’re quoting him?)

Now, mutt can thread based on either Message-ID: or References: and
what I see may be a result of its decisions here about who the right
ancestor is.

Scrolling back through the thread, all the Message-ID: headers have
discourse style message-of-topic ids in them, examples:

  • C.A.M. Gerlach Message-ID: <topic/14680/51080.c10d6dc3ade4bb10054c3983@discuss.python.org>
  • C.A.M. Gerlach Message-ID: <topic/14680/51042.722d935c35c6628c1698dca5@discuss.python.org>
  • Cameron Simpson Message-ID: <topic/14680/51078.4cf65126fd51434cae3be032@discuss.python.org>
  • C.A.M. Gerlach Message-ID: <topic/14680/51043.f1a2612a93416948402ce94e@discuss.python.org>
  • Proby626 Message-ID: <topic/14680/50979.dae0abe13a6e660527fa3cd3@discuss.python.org>
  • Steven D’Aprano Message-ID: <topic/14680/50971.20e6177fd66ebc10cf95a7f0@discuss.python.org>

and yet the In-Reply-To: cites the message-id of the source message,
which for a forum user may match up but for an email user is their home
domain based message-id such as pearwood for Steven and cskk for me.
And those messages are not present with those message-ids here - they
have discourse generated message-ids.

Anyway, IMO the bug may be that the primary In-Reply-To: head cites
the source (author’s) message-id instead of the discourse based
message-id (which is the only one the end user receives). So messages
are not matched up.

If Steven’s mailer does not peer at the References: header (which is
for USENET, not email) then he might well (and legitimately) consider
these unthreaded because the in-reply-to does not cite a message-id in
his mail folder.

This strikes me as a discourse bug. Whom do I pester about it?

Gateways such as email->discourse should preserve the message-id
specificly so that this works. There’s no technical reason discourse
can’t do this.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au