Users of Thunderbird 3 will have noticed that posts from Google groups muck up the threading. To fix this go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General (tab) -> Config Editor? (button) and change the values for mail.correct_threading to false mail.strict_threading to false mail.thread_without_re to true then go to Edit -> Newsgroup Properties and clicked the Repair folder and lo, proper threading This has been a PSA
Paging the Thunderbird users
Mar 23, 2011
17 Replies
Is the "fault" due to TB3 or GG?
After experiencing the rest of TB3, my money's on TB3 misinterpreting the way things should be done.
It's Google Groups, they don't put a References header unless the poster tells GG to quote the orinal article.
Nick
Hmm. Did what you said and TB went into a tail spin after the repair folder button, so here I am on Google Groups :-) Have unsubscribed and re-subscribed but it hangs after downloading half the headers. Great fun. It was getting a bit clunky anyway, so maybe it was time for some colonic irrigation
I tried it on a small group before posting and have subsequently done it to this newsgroup and another larger one. It does appear to re-download all the headers again. My server (Zen) has over 20,000 for uk.d-i-y but it didn't take long.
That's why it's called ThunderTurd in our household!
MBQ
It's GG. They don't include the reference information in the headers that a 'proper' news client would. Technically the behaviour of TB3 is completely correct, it would thread standards-compliant messages correctly. But it fails to handle the broken messages that originate in GG.
Choosing to thread only on title rather than references is a workaround, but it shouldn't have been necessary.
IIRC mine has 700,000 or something ridiculous, at any rate back to early
2005. All working again though...I think
Its the hack the OE does - but then that causes it to break threads when someone changes the thread title.
Sadly I for one will no longer be updating thread titles. GG have a lot to answer for.
Just a test to see what happens when the thread title is changed.
On TB2 here, the thread remains unbroken.
TB 3.1.9 with amendments someone suggested a day or 2 back is still threading this lot correctly :-)
Also works on TB3 (without the suggested workaround).
Is there any other way? As far I can see in GG there is only a single Reply option (well, and Reply to Author) which always automatically quotes the original article.
For what it's worth GG correctly shows this entire thread, threaded, regardless of the change of the title but I don't suppose that helps you much! :-)
Mathew
Also works on TB3 WITH workaround thus proving GG is to blame.
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