Bloody plumbers

[Lobster]

I don't actually know what mine's made of: it's encased in insulation and an outer metal casing. The issue is presumably that a pressurised tank is both very expensive to replace relative to an unpressurised one, and secondly the implications of corrosion-induced failure are potentially a lot more significant. FWIW the anode cost me £48, and normally need replacing evry few years.

This morning I bored the bloke behind the counter of the plumber's merchant with my tale of woe, and he said that many brands didn't have anodes these days, and were made (lined) with stainless steel or even glass. Vaillant, however (my brand), have always used an anode, and still do apparently.

David

[Tim Streater]

Where I lived in the US, the hot water tank (integral gas heater) was glass inside, fibre-glass insulated, and a metal case. I dunno what the gas flames actually played onto. Seems that, over the years, tiny residual bits of grit etc in the water gradually abrade the glass until it's worn through and then leaks. This is what happened to me; took 20 years though. Luckily in my case the whole lot was in the garage.

[D.M.Chapman]

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure there is no such thing in NNTP standards. It's a referenced header - and it references an article. Can't think how it could reference anything else tbh.

I guess the only sane thing in that state would be to reference the original article, but that might not be available to the client depending retention policy.

Darren

[Lobster]

Job now done: so here you go, anode fans!:

You can see why I was a little pissed off with the plumber...

David

[Tim Streater]

Blimey O'Reilly !!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Why does it give the subject name in the headers if it's of no use?

I can make sure it threads by doing a blank reply to an individual post. But that seems weird to me if it's not actually following a particular thread - just a comment on the subject.

[Andy Burns]

So that the subject can be displayed! Where else would it go?

I've never met any other newsreader that has such a strange concept.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It appears to be creating a new subject with some newsreaders?

Well, many have tried to complicate things well beyond the original concept.

[D.M.Chapman]

Err... so other readers can see the subject? It's not a header that can be referenced is what I meant. The content is irrelevant (but plenty or clients attempt to infer threading from it).

If you are replying to an article, then it references the article you are replying to. If you are replying to the subject, then reply to the original article (which should be relevant to the subject).

If your reply isn't relavant to the thread content at all, then it probably deserves a new thread entirely (but if the subject is that same, some broken clients will attach it to the thread anyway).

Changing the subject mid thread handles threaddrift where the conversation wanders (like this...). A decent client will display this and let a reader mark that part of the article tree as read. Not sure what clients let you do this (I know some do).

Darren

[John Rumm]

Not sure I get this...

The original concept for usenet posts was/remains that you can either post a new message and hence start a new thread, or reply to an existing message in which case your message becomes a part of an existing thread. There are no other options (ignoring "reply by email" etc).

A reply to an existing message will be typically indented under the message to which you replied by most readers - but the actual display style is user selectable.

I don't really know what you mean by "replying to a subject". It appears from your message headers as if you just posted a new message that happened to have the same title as a previous thread. If so, then my newsreader showed that correctly as the start of a new thread.

[John Rumm]

TB3 lets you kill subthreads, or block mark selected articles as "read".

[John Rumm]

Probably because the unvented tanks are usually stainless rather than copper.

[Rob]

Don't think it's a standards issue - your posts often show up as separate threads, seemingly out of the blue.

Wouldn't mind if the content was of any value ;-)

Rob

[Adrian C]

I think it might be something to do with invocation of the text editor in Dave's email/news package, where preselection of previous text prior to doing that, plonks the selected text in the compostion window as a convienience shortcut.

To illustrate (or confuse) Thunderbird does something similarish. If you select some text in a message and then reply to that message, the text selected is brought over into the new window save for a little formatting for quoting.

Perhaps when Dave highlights the subject text, it's also grabbing the start of the "Subject:" header line, loading it into the editor as a title suddenly recognised from this 'virtual header' and hence when the item is sent we have a new message with no previous references.

Maybe?

Dave, try selecting all of the following line and then hit reply. Does it create a new message titled as I've put there?

Subject: This is a test message

[Dave Plowman (News)]

No - of course it doesn't. It will include a reference in the headers to the post I've quoted. The reason there was no such reference in my original post that created all this is that I didn't quote or refer to a previous post.

I'll now post one like that.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

This is a post following on from Adrian's one, but a 'reply blank'.

[John Rumm]

If you have TB set to quote original text, then selecting some first just forces it to quote (the selected) subset rather than the whole message.

[John Rumm]

But that reply is a proper threaded reply, unlike the post that started this thread...

[John Rumm]

To be fair, this was the first time I recall it happening...

Who elected you moderator?

[Rob]

At least 2 in the last 50 or so threads showing on my newsreader. Doesn't bother me at all, although I am curious about why he does it. It could be interpreted as some manner of self-aggrandisement I suppose.

And who elected you arbiter? ;-)

Rob