In order to match up messages that belong to the same conversation, email clients use two techniques. First, they match emails with the same subject line, which is mostly accurate. Occasionally this will result in “false positives” where unrelated emails are grouped together because the senders happened to use the same subject. The second method is far more accurate and makes use of a hidden portion of the email message which most people never see. Emails, just like web page requests include a number of hidden “headers” that carry extra information about the message.

This includes information about the email client the sender used, the message priority, and the different servers that handled the message along the way. Each email message also includes a unique identification string called the “Message-Id”. This string is unique for every email message in the world… no two are ever identical. In the screenshot above, the Message-Id is <49518270.7010405@degeneration.co.uk>. If someone were to reply to that message, the Message-Id of the original email would be included in the reply email as another hidden header aptly named In-Reply-To:

Any future replies would continue to include an In-Reply-To header with this value so that email clients can recognize that they all belong to together and group them accordingly. This method of conversation tracking is far more accurate, but has one problem. That problem occurs when some lazy person comes along and wants to send a message to the mailing list, but instead of clicking on “New Message” in their mail client, they pick a message at random from the list, click “Reply”, and then clear out the subject and body of the message. While this looks like a new message about a new topic, because the person “replied” to a previous email instead of starting a new message, the previous Message-Id got attached. Note the following reply to the same email above, but now the subject has been changed from talking about a Google sign-in button, to the BBC being an OpenID provider. These are completely different discussions!

If we go back to our first screenshot of the two message threads, we can see the this new message (as well as any of its replies) get lumped right together with the original discussion.

So today’s lesson in email etiquette: If you’re not actually replying to a particular email, DON’T CLICK “REPLY”. Copy and paste the “To:” email address if you have to, but don’t click reply! There might be some grace here for emails between individuals, but not on mailing lists, especially not on technical mailing lists. (Not meaning to pick on Peter in the screenshots above… he is not the only offender on the OpenID mailing lists, that just happened to be the most recent occurrence).

Okay, that’s my rant for the day… I’m good now. Oh, and Merry Christmas. :)

Rather than just reply with a big fat arrow pointing to the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every list message, I decided to try a more personal touch. First I googled Joe’s name which he provided in the email along with the company name shown in the From header just to make sure this was a legitimate person (those spammers and phishers are getting pretty crafty these days). I found that his company indeed existed in Australia and had a couple of domains that pointed to his website. Now I could have tried the contact number on the website itself, but I decided to dig a little deeper. Checking the whois entries on two of the domains, I found one registered to Joe with the same PO Box and phone number as the website, but the other had a Tasmanian residential address (thanks Google Maps), a different phone number, and was registered in a female’s name. A little more googling and I found someone by that name listed as a 2006 graduate of a Tasmanian high school not 9 km from the listed residence. Figuring this must be the right one, I decided to try the number.

I was down to $0.04 from my Skype trial, so I added some time to my account and dialed the number. The gentleman who answered had an obvious Australian accent, as did the voices on the television I could hear in the background. I asked for Joe but was told he wasn’t at this number. I asked if he knew who Joe was, and he confirmed that he was Joe’s father-in-law. I explained that I was calling from Los Angeles and asked if he had a number where I could reach Joe. He provided me the number, but before hanging up inquired as to how I had gotten his name. When I explained to him that a website domain was registered to this number, I learned that the female name listed was his granddaughter (presumably Joe’s daughter). Having to learn a little about Australian phone numbers (replace the leading zero with +61 when calling internationally), I discovered that this new number was most likely a cell phone. I dialed the number, waited some time for the call to connect, and then finally, I had reached Joe.

Not surprisingly, he sounded a little confused at first. The colorful epithets had been replaced by embarrassment and repeated apologies. I told him it was quite alright and that I understood he wasn’t really angry with me, but rather was frustrated with the fact that his continual requests to be unsubscribed proved fruitless. I then directed his attention back to my email and the the auto-attached footer which contained the link for unsubscribing. A couple more apologies and “it’s okay, I understand“‘s and we were bidding each other “Cheerio!” (that’s England isn’t it, not Australia… nevermind, then).

So first, it’s kinda cool that I was able to find this guy and call him within just a few minutes to help solve his problem. All the tools are right there to do the research, and technology like Skype makes international calling affordable (if not free). Depending on how you want to look at it though, you could also say it’s rather scary that I was able to find this guy and call him within just a few minutes. Not only that, I discovered his (presumed) daughter’s name, approximate age, and high school, as well as his father-in-law’s phone number and home address (along with a nice satellite photo courtesy of Google Earth). Were I not the nice guy that I am, I might have taken offense to his reply and sought to do unkindly things to him and his family. But then again, I put myself right out there on the web, so I guess the same could be done to me. (Although for me, it kinda comes with the territory.)

You know, I learned something today. I learned that people on the Internet… they’re just people, like you and me. They may say hurtful things in an email, but it may just be that they’re frustrated with technology. I’ve learned that sometimes they just need a helping hand to get off that email list, and that they really didn’t mean for those hurtful words to be directed at you personally. But I’ve also learned that if they did, it’s really easy to find their family and cause them some real grief! (Just kidding, Joe) :)

First set alternate shortcuts for the normal menu options by opening the Keyboard Preference Pane and click on the last tab “Keyboard Shortcuts”. Add a new shortcut, selecting “Mail” as the application, “Reply” as the menu title, and give it some obscure shortcut (I’m using ⌘⌥R). Repeat to remap “Reply All” as well (I’m adding a ⇧ to the previous shortcut). Relaunch Mail.app for the changes to take effect. Then you can setup the scripts and assign them as triggers within Quicksilver for use specifically within Mail.app.

E-mail is not a platform for design