Thank you for chiming in. I take your point, very well. But a fundamental disagreement we have is your generous opinion of the 90 %ile user's ability and desir

Thank you for chiming in. I take your point, very well. But a fundamental disagreement we have is your generous opinion of the 90 %ile user's ability and desire to become an email expert. The loss of that battle was recognized in September 1993. gmail didn't relinquish its duty to educate users as it became popular; it became popular (in part) because it did things in a simpler way, that users didn't have to "learn" how to use. The vast majority of folks do not care about such trivialities as following a thread. It requires forethought that they do not want to invest. You have to meet users where they are at. One can wish for better users, sure. That's not a winning strategy. As well, I still maintain it's unfair to pick on gmail. They had to follow Outlook. Outlook willfully broke threads for other MUAs by not including In-Reply-To headers. That was just evil. At least gmail generates In-Reply-To and References headers! Which Outlook drops. Outlook should be the bogeyman for your article, not gmail!