[mdlug] Are there any clients that support sub-thread blocking?

[Rich Clark <rrclark@rrclark.net>]

On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, Clinton V. Weiss wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 7:08 PM, Kristian Erik Hermansen
> <kristian.hermansen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  I use gmail (so do you), and heavily utilize the 'mute' command ->
>>  shortcut == 'm'.  Hit 'm' on your keyboard while reading this thread.
>>  You will notice that gmail mutes the conversation and you will not see
>>  any more emails on this topic :-)
>
> This causes the whole thread to be ignored, which isn't what I want.
> I'm looking to ignore sub-threads, take for example a thread that may
> look like this:
>
> Interesting thread
> -Interesting reply
> --Interesting reply
> ---somewhat interesting political comparison
> ----political rant  (ignore this and it's sub-threads)
> -----political rant (ignored)
> ------political rant (ignored)
> -Interesting reply
> --Interesting reply
>
> If I use mute or any ignore equivalent, the majority of browsers will
> cause the whole thread to be ignored.  Raymond made a good point that
> ignoring certain sub-threads may cause me to miss some of the good
> stuff - that's something I can live with since I chose to ignore that
> particular sub-thread.  It isn't much different than ignoring a whole
> thread and possibly missing a useful nugget or two.
>
> I'm just looking to personally ignore the thread branches which are of
> little value to myself.  This could apply to political discussions,
> ethical discussions, or even discussions on the differences between
> Suse and Debian.
>
> Ignoring a whole thread is a bad idea.  Let's say a particular thread
> with many off-topic discussions is ignored by me, and eventually dies.
> The root of this thread may have been something interesting which
> someones, maybe weeks or months later, decides to add their own good
> content to the thread.  If I've ignored the whole thread, I'll never
> know that person's contribution.  If I can ignore particular
> sub-threads which are of little value, then I'm running a smaller
> risk.
>
> Yes, I'm being nit-picky on this.  I'm sure there are many others out
> there who would agree with these thoughts and opinions, whether
> they're on this list or not.
>
> Every one has an opinion, I just might not want to know everyone's opinion.

I agree that you should have full control over it; however, it's sad that 
Google hasn't thought about the approach nor have the Thunderbird devs. I 
wonder if a bug report to either organization is in order?

I also wonder, does Gmail allow you to either forward email to a 
self-hosted mailserver or retrieve email via POP3 or similar protocol? 
Again, fetchmail and procmail would be your friends, and you could read 
messages with pine/alpine or similar curses-based mail client that would 
offer better filtering that you could ever get with webmail or 
Thunderbird.