Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Johannes Schindelin
<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> As for the accusation that there was no explanation: this is false.

Where is the evidence that you warned the user _before_ banning him?

The policy in wikipedia is to notify through the user talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Notifying_the_blocked_user

> I did
> not want to address this accusation because it is so plainly ridiculous,
> but it seems that everybody and her dog thinks "yes, Dscho is such a nasty
> person, he would do that, so let's assume that the other guy did not lie".

I'm not assuming anything, I'm just looking at the evidence, and the
evidence shows you blocked not only Amir, but a bunch of other people,
and any attempted discussion through the user talk pages has been
deleted by you.

So the evidence has been suppressed.

> In effect, all who keep this thread alive, reinforcing the accusations,
> getting emotional and stuff, are feeding the troll. And making sure that
> the task of keeping the Git Wiki clean is as undesirable as [censored].
>
> So, sure, keep on going with this thread. I'm done.

I find this behavior unacceptable in an admin.

I'd like to propose myself as sysop in order to make the wiki more
hospitable. I've done stuff in wikipedia, and have been involved in
some conflict resolutions. Some of the things I would like to do is:

 1) Encourage the use of user talk pages (not to be confused with user
pages) in order to foster communication within the wiki to have more
civilized and transparent conflict resolution
 2) Allow users to search deleted pages (if possible)
 3) Revisit old deleted pages, unblock accounts if appropriate, and apologize
 4) Add a patrol group[1], and encourage users to join it in order to
get rid of spam in a collaborative manner

[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Patrolled_edits

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Michael J Gruber]

Oh, pleaaaze, no (on the subject line). No need for more fuel in this topic.

Felipe Contreras venit, vidit, dixit 10.08.2010 12:18:
> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Johannes Schindelin
> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>> As for the accusation that there was no explanation: this is false.
> 
> Where is the evidence that you warned the user _before_ banning him?
> 

The evidence is that Dscho says so.
The counter evidence is that Amir says otherwise.

Knowing Dscho, I consider an occasional rash of quick-shooting possible;
I consider it impossible that he's dishonest with us here.

Note that what is an "explanation" to one person may not be one to
another one, especially across two language and culture barriers. In
particular, my statement about Dscho's credibility does not imply any
statement about Amir's.

[...]
> I'd like to propose myself as sysop in order to make the wiki more
> hospitable. 
[more detailed proposal cut out]

Looking at the history of our wiki I don't see any need to overshoot as
a result of this mostly singular incident. It should suffice to

- reactivate Amir's account
- make a clear statement about user pages (limit, discourage or disable)

Michael

P.S.: wiki discussions should stay on this list to avoid the type of
dis-association which has happened with git-scm.com and whatever names
itself "The Git Community Foo".

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Michael J Gruber
<git@drmicha.warpmail.net> wrote:
> Oh, pleaaaze, no (on the subject line). No need for more fuel in this topic.

This is a separate topic; IMO we need another admin.

> Felipe Contreras venit, vidit, dixit 10.08.2010 12:18:
>> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Johannes Schindelin
>> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>>> As for the accusation that there was no explanation: this is false.
>>
>> Where is the evidence that you warned the user _before_ banning him?
>
> The evidence is that Dscho says so.
> The counter evidence is that Amir says otherwise.

That's not evidence in my book.

> Knowing Dscho, I consider an occasional rash of quick-shooting possible;
> I consider it impossible that he's dishonest with us here.
>
> Note that what is an "explanation" to one person may not be one to
> another one, especially across two language and culture barriers. In
> particular, my statement about Dscho's credibility does not imply any
> statement about Amir's.

Note that Johannes is playing with words: "As for the accusation that
there was no explanation: this is false."; there's a difference
between explaining why somebody has been banned, and warning somebody
_before_ banning him. I suggested the latter didn't happen, Johannes
reluctantly reassured the former.

I'm not interested in begging Johannes for a detailed explanation of
what happened, that's what the user talk pages are for.

> [...]
>> I'd like to propose myself as sysop in order to make the wiki more
>> hospitable.
> [more detailed proposal cut out]
>
> Looking at the history of our wiki I don't see any need to overshoot as
> a result of this mostly singular incident. It should suffice to

I don't think having more than one admin is overshooting.

> - reactivate Amir's account

Who is going to do that? Johannes apparently already said his last
words on that topic.

> - make a clear statement about user pages (limit, discourage or disable)

That is a separate topic.

> P.S.: wiki discussions should stay on this list to avoid the type of
> dis-association which has happened with git-scm.com and whatever names
> itself "The Git Community Foo".

I disagree.

If the wiki followed the git workflow, then the changes would have to
be proposed as patches to the mailing list, and a maintainer would
review and apply them to the wiki. Obviously that's not how wikis
work; anyone can contribute to the wiki, and such contributions don't
have to touch the mailing list. The wiki and the mailing list are
independent.

Similarly, there's no need to cause noise in the mailing list about
disputes in the wiki. For example: "Why did you revert my change in
page FooBar?"; the mailing list doesn't know about page FooBar, nor
the changes that are happening there, so any dispute will catch the
mailing list out of context.

Moreover there are people interested on the wiki, but not on the mailing list.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Ramkumar Ramachandra]

Hi Felipe, Michael, and Amir,

Michael J Gruber writes:
> Oh, pleaaaze, no (on the subject line). No need for more fuel in this topic.

I agree with Michael. Please don't do this- it's quite
distasteful. Johannes might have had a bad day and acted a little
inappropriately, Amir might have done something to trigger it, or it
might have been a combination of several other things. None of that
justifies all the time we're wasting on this issue.

> > I'd like to propose myself as sysop in order to make the wiki more
> > hospitable. 
> [more detailed proposal cut out]
> 
> Looking at the history of our wiki I don't see any need to overshoot as
> a result of this mostly singular incident. It should suffice to
> 
> - reactivate Amir's account
> - make a clear statement about user pages (limit, discourage or disable)

Right. There was ONE distrubing incident on a Wiki. Let's not blow it
out of proportion and waste our time digging up dirt on one of our
own contributors.

As part of the community, let us take the reponsibility for this
mistake and work towards becoming more friendly towards foreigners as
a community. Michel has already suggested some quick steps to take to
bury this discussion quickly- I'm in favor of doing it as soon as
possible and personally seeing my inbox fill up with patches
instead. Not at all to say that we should take the issue lightly, but
I never thought we'd discuss it at this length.

Amir: We as a community are sorry that you've been treated
unfairly. Thanks for letting us know; we'll make sure that this
doesn't happen with others in future.

Thanks.

-- Ram

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2010/8/10 Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>:
> Amir: We as a community are sorry that you've been treated
> unfairly. Thanks for letting us know; we'll make sure that this
> doesn't happen with others in future.

Johannes has just unblocked me and apologized.

I, on my behalf, sincerely apologize for the inappropriate language
that i used on that user page that i created. I was trying to vent
some frustration and i have clearly done it in the wrong place.

I believe that i have positive things to contribute to the Git wiki
and to the Git community in general and that this incident will be
soon forgotten.

-- 
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Michael J Gruber]

Amir E. Aharoni venit, vidit, dixit 10.08.2010 15:44:
> 2010/8/10 Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>:
>> Amir: We as a community are sorry that you've been treated
>> unfairly. Thanks for letting us know; we'll make sure that this
>> doesn't happen with others in future.
> 
> Johannes has just unblocked me and apologized.
> 
> I, on my behalf, sincerely apologize for the inappropriate language
> that i used on that user page that i created. I was trying to vent
> some frustration and i have clearly done it in the wrong place.
> 
> I believe that i have positive things to contribute to the Git wiki
> and to the Git community in general and that this incident will be
> soon forgotten.
> 

Thanks, Amir & Dscho!

Now back to work :)

Michael

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 3:33 PM, Ramkumar Ramachandra
<artagnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael J Gruber writes:
>> Oh, pleaaaze, no (on the subject line). No need for more fuel in this topic.
>
> I agree with Michael. Please don't do this- it's quite
> distasteful.

How having more than one admin is distasteful?

> Johannes might have had a bad day and acted a little
> inappropriately, Amir might have done something to trigger it, or it
> might have been a combination of several other things. None of that
> justifies all the time we're wasting on this issue.

Exactly, and he might have another bad day again, and in order to
avoid this issue in the future it's useful to have other people as
admins.

>> > I'd like to propose myself as sysop in order to make the wiki more
>> > hospitable.
>> [more detailed proposal cut out]
>>
>> Looking at the history of our wiki I don't see any need to overshoot as
>> a result of this mostly singular incident. It should suffice to

> Right. There was ONE distrubing incident on a Wiki. Let's not blow it
> out of proportion and waste our time digging up dirt on one of our
> own contributors.

I don't think it's a single incident:
Dscho blocked Amire80 (infinite, account creation blocked) (Spamming
links to external sites)

Dscho blocked Happypeter (infinite, account creation blocked) (adding
random non-information on user pages)
Dscho blocked Jheena789 (infinite, account creation blocked) (Spamming
links to external sites)
Dscho blocked AlmaBailey (infinite, account creation blocked, e-mail
blocked) (Spamming links to external sites)
Dscho blocked Vsimon213 (infinite, account creation blocked) (Spamming
links to external sites)
Dscho blocked Gaylechris (infinite, account creation blocked)
(Spamming links to external sites)
Dscho blocked Xuebao (infinite, account creation blocked) (Spamming
links to external sites)
Dscho blocked Gentleman Flying (infinite, account creation blocked)
(Spamming links to external sites)
Dscho blocked Flying Gentleman (infinite, account creation blocked)
(Spamming links to external sites)
Dscho blocked Smart (infinite, account creation blocked, e-mail
blocked) (Spamming links to external sites)
Dscho blocked Kimclarkkiss (infinite, account creation blocked)
(Spamming links to external sites)
Dscho blocked Chandller (infinite, account creation blocked)
(Inserting nonsense/gibberish into pages)
Dscho blocked David80 (infinite, account creation blocked) (Spamming
links to external sites)

How many of these people have been wrongly banned? It's impossible to
know because only Johannes (the only admin), can see the deleted
entries.

> As part of the community, let us take the reponsibility for this
> mistake and work towards becoming more friendly towards foreigners as
> a community. Michel has already suggested some quick steps to take to
> bury this discussion quickly- I'm in favor of doing it as soon as
> possible and personally seeing my inbox fill up with patches
> instead. Not at all to say that we should take the issue lightly, but
> I never thought we'd discuss it at this length.
>
> Amir: We as a community are sorry that you've been treated
> unfairly. Thanks for letting us know; we'll make sure that this
> doesn't happen with others in future.

How exactly? How do we as a community ensure that Johannes is not
going to ban people unfairly? I haven't seen any acceptance of bad
behavior, nor have I seen any hint as to what he will do the next time
something like this happens.

I say we need *at least* another admin, anyone.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Sverre Rabbelier]

Heya,

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 09:16, Felipe Contreras
<felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> How having more than one admin is distasteful?

No, the way you are treating this is.

> I don't think it's a single incident:

I do. Dscho has been keeping the old wiki clean for I don't know how
long. He has done the same for the new wiki. I am confident that those
other bans are for good reasons.

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Avery Pennarun]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 09:16, Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I don't think it's a single incident:
>
> I do. Dscho has been keeping the old wiki clean for I don't know how
> long. He has done the same for the new wiki. I am confident that those
> other bans are for good reasons.

I also find the subject line distasteful; there is no evidence of
misbehaviour, and the subject line implies that there is.  I'm
hesitant to change the subject line and break the thread, however.

However, the best advice I ever got about trust is: "Trust, but verify."

Right now, whether or not Johannes has done the right thing has been
called into question and is resulting in such an angry thread *only*
because it's impossible to verify what has actually been done.  When
people can verify what happened - which in this case just means
looking at the deleted pages - then trust is possible and easy.

Most social problems come from the social environment, not individual
people's actions.  In this case, the social environment (wiki
settings) have been configured explicitly to cast doubt on Johannes.
It was an accident waiting to happen, and it finally happened.

The proposal to add a second admin to the wiki - or at least make
deleted pages visible to one other person - is not about Johannes.
It's about creating a healthy social environment that allows people to
relieve their suspicion before they let it get out of control.

So far, all the counterarguments have been of the form, "But Johannes
is a good guy, so we don't need to check on him."  That's an invalid
argument, because the real proposal (modulo the stupid subject line of
this thread) is not about Johannes at all.  Checking on him isn't
about preventing him from being an idiot, it's about preventing
everyone else from being an idiot.  Which I think we can all agree at
this point, would have been nice.

Have fun,

Avery

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Ramkumar Ramachandra]

Hi Felipe, Sverre and Avery,

Felipe writes:
> I don't think it's a single incident:
> Dscho blocked Amire80 (infinite, account creation blocked) (Spamming
> links to external sites)

Okay. I hope you get the point- we didn't have Johannes being pulled
up like this before, atleast after I joined the community.

> How exactly? How do we as a community ensure that Johannes is not
> going to ban people unfairly? I haven't seen any acceptance of bad
> behavior, nor have I seen any hint as to what he will do the next time
> something like this happens.

The current issue is solved. Johannes apologized, Amir apologized and
I apologized on behalf of the community. Everyone is happy. The first
step towards correcting a problem is recognizing it- we have succeeded
in doing that and resolving it amicably.

Sverre Rabbelier writes:
> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 09:16, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> > How having more than one admin is distasteful?
> 
> No, the way you are treating this is.

It's okay to have another admin- I don't think anyone opposes the
idea. Just that I think it's a little inappropriate to have a proposal
for it in an email with the current admin blamed in the subject
line. If the need for another administrator is felt, we can start a
new thread with some suitable candidates and decide amicably keeping
Johannes in the loop. The purpose of the administrator should not be
to "attack", but rather work with Johannes, helping him cope with the
work load. I'm sure Johannes would be happy to have someone else
working with him as well :)

Avery Pennarun writes:
> Right now, whether or not Johannes has done the right thing has been
> called into question and is resulting in such an angry thread *only*
> because it's impossible to verify what has actually been done.  When
> people can verify what happened - which in this case just means
> looking at the deleted pages - then trust is possible and easy.

:)

> Most social problems come from the social environment, not individual
> people's actions.  In this case, the social environment (wiki
> settings) have been configured explicitly to cast doubt on Johannes.
> It was an accident waiting to happen, and it finally happened.

> The proposal to add a second admin to the wiki - or at least make
> deleted pages visible to one other person - is not about Johannes.
> It's about creating a healthy social environment that allows people to
> relieve their suspicion before they let it get out of control.

> So far, all the counterarguments have been of the form, "But Johannes
> is a good guy, so we don't need to check on him."  That's an invalid
> argument, because the real proposal (modulo the stupid subject line of
> this thread) is not about Johannes at all.  Checking on him isn't
> about preventing him from being an idiot, it's about preventing
> everyone else from being an idiot.  Which I think we can all agree at
> this point, would have been nice.

Very nicely put- I have to agree. We have to stop blaming Johannes and
start blaming ourselves and work towards a solution together; example:
have one more admin.

-- Ram

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 7:19 PM, Ramkumar Ramachandra
<artagnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Felipe writes:
>> I don't think it's a single incident:
>> Dscho blocked Amire80 (infinite, account creation blocked) (Spamming
>> links to external sites)
>
> Okay. I hope you get the point- we didn't have Johannes being pulled
> up like this before, atleast after I joined the community.

That doesn't mean there aren't other cases like this. The affected
users might have decided to give up, instead of contacting the mailing
list (possibly understandable considering the heat Amir received).

>> How exactly? How do we as a community ensure that Johannes is not
>> going to ban people unfairly? I haven't seen any acceptance of bad
>> behavior, nor have I seen any hint as to what he will do the next time
>> something like this happens.
>
> The current issue is solved. Johannes apologized, Amir apologized and
> I apologized on behalf of the community. Everyone is happy. The first
> step towards correcting a problem is recognizing it- we have succeeded
> in doing that and resolving it amicably.

Yes, the original problem has been resolved, but it's not clear what
will happen the next time. There have been many constructive
suggestions, and I haven't seen Johannes comment on any of them.

I've just created a page for people to comment:
https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/WikiIdeas#Stop_immediate_blocking

> Sverre Rabbelier writes:
>> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 09:16, Felipe Contreras
>> <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > How having more than one admin is distasteful?
>>
>> No, the way you are treating this is.
>
> It's okay to have another admin- I don't think anyone opposes the
> idea. Just that I think it's a little inappropriate to have a proposal
> for it in an email with the current admin blamed in the subject
> line. If the need for another administrator is felt, we can start a
> new thread with some suitable candidates and decide amicably keeping
> Johannes in the loop. The purpose of the administrator should not be
> to "attack", but rather work with Johannes, helping him cope with the
> work load. I'm sure Johannes would be happy to have someone else
> working with him as well :)

I think it's not healthy for the second maintainer to always pat in
the back the first maintainer; constructive criticism is needed.

Even Johannes has accepted that he misbehaved, so I don't think I did
anything wrong on pointing the truth.

> Avery Pennarun writes:
>> Right now, whether or not Johannes has done the right thing has been
>> called into question and is resulting in such an angry thread *only*
>> because it's impossible to verify what has actually been done.  When
>> people can verify what happened - which in this case just means
>> looking at the deleted pages - then trust is possible and easy.
>
> :)

I'm not going to go into details as why I think no warning was issued,
just that we need this:
https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/WikiIdeas#Allow_users_to_see_deleted_pages

>> Most social problems come from the social environment, not individual
>> people's actions.  In this case, the social environment (wiki
>> settings) have been configured explicitly to cast doubt on Johannes.
>> It was an accident waiting to happen, and it finally happened.
>
>> The proposal to add a second admin to the wiki - or at least make
>> deleted pages visible to one other person - is not about Johannes.
>> It's about creating a healthy social environment that allows people to
>> relieve their suspicion before they let it get out of control.
>
>> So far, all the counterarguments have been of the form, "But Johannes
>> is a good guy, so we don't need to check on him."  That's an invalid
>> argument, because the real proposal (modulo the stupid subject line of
>> this thread) is not about Johannes at all.  Checking on him isn't
>> about preventing him from being an idiot, it's about preventing
>> everyone else from being an idiot.  Which I think we can all agree at
>> this point, would have been nice.
>
> Very nicely put- I have to agree. We have to stop blaming Johannes and
> start blaming ourselves and work towards a solution together; example:
> have one more admin.

Definitely:
https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/WikiIdeas#More_admins

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Avery Pennarun]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Felipe Contreras
<felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not going to go into details as why I think no warning was issued,
> just that we need this:
> https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/WikiIdeas#Allow_users_to_see_deleted_pages

Keep in mind that 99% of the unwanted crud that gets posted to a wiki
is spam and absolutely doesn't deserve a fair warning before it gets
deleted.  Just based purely on the list of usernames that was posted
earlier, it looked mainly like spammers to me.

If you want to implement a huge big process before deleting/banning
users, you'll want to be sure what you're getting into.

I personally don't think that anything that was done originally was
necessarily wrong, or that the wiki management itself needs to be
fixed.  If it were possible for people to simply look at deleted
pages, this thread would have been "Hey, you deleted me and it was
unwarranted!" -> Someone checks it out -> "No, it was warranted, don't
post swearwords to user pages" -> "Oops, sorry" -> Unbanned.

The thread went on as long as it did simply because verification was
impossible.  Don't over-repair the system and thus introduce new and
improved problems.

Have fun,

Avery

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Felipe Contreras]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 9:03 PM, Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm not going to go into details as why I think no warning was issued,
>> just that we need this:
>> https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/WikiIdeas#Allow_users_to_see_deleted_pages
>
> Keep in mind that 99% of the unwanted crud that gets posted to a wiki
> is spam and absolutely doesn't deserve a fair warning before it gets
> deleted.  Just based purely on the list of usernames that was posted
> earlier, it looked mainly like spammers to me.

Sure, if it's clearly spam (as in created by a spam bot) it doesn't
deserve a warning, but as Amir's case demonstrates, not all of the
deleted content was like that.

> If you want to implement a huge big process before deleting/banning
> users, you'll want to be sure what you're getting into.

There's no big process: warn before you ban if the user is not a bot. Simple.

> I personally don't think that anything that was done originally was
> necessarily wrong, or that the wiki management itself needs to be
> fixed.  If it were possible for people to simply look at deleted
> pages, this thread would have been "Hey, you deleted me and it was
> unwarranted!" -> Someone checks it out -> "No, it was warranted, don't
> post swearwords to user pages" -> "Oops, sorry" -> Unbanned.

That can't be right because the reason wasn't that, but "Spamming
links to external sites", and that hasn't even been decided yet.

But if that's what you meant, here's a more likely case:
1) Join the wiki
2) Fill the user page as requested
3) Get blocked permanently
4) Give up

Just by having a *temporary* ban instead of a permanent one (when the
user is clearly not a spam bot) would not have only decreased the
thread, but it wouldn't have happened in the first place and wouldn't
have caused the case I just mentioned.

> The thread went on as long as it did simply because verification was
> impossible.

No, it did because there was no admin willing to fix the problem: unban.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: Johannes misbehavior in the wiki, and a request for admin rights (was: wiki "abuse")

[Michael Witten]

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 09:49, Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm hesitant to change the subject line
> and break the thread, however.

The RFCs solved this issue with headers:

    Message-Id
    In-Reply-To
    References

It's a damn shame that they are so poorly used.