Threading electronic mail: A preliminary study

It is proposed that threading of electronic messages be treated as a language processing task, and that a significant level of threading effectiveness can be achieved by applying standard text matching methods from information retrieval to the textual portions of messages.

Abstract

Tools for processing email and other electronic messages should be able to recognize and manipulate threads, that is, conversations among two or more people carried out by exchange of messages. While user clients typically insert in messages structural information useful for recovering threads, inconsistencies between clients, loose standards, creative user behavior, and the subjective nature of conversation make threading systems based on structural information only partially successful. We propose that this situation is unlikely to change, and that threading of electronic messages be treated as a language processing task. Preliminary experiments show that a significant level of threading effectiveness can be achieved by applying standard text matching methods from information retrieval to the textual portions of messages.