Thread hijacking

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[edit] Email

Thread hijacking in email communication is the act of composing a new mail to a mailing list or newsgroup by replying to an existing but unrelated message and just changing the subject line and body of the message instead of composing a new message from scratch.

The problem is that emails that are replies to other emails contain an In-Reply-To: header field that records the Message-ID of the original email. This helps email clients display messages in a hierarchical, also called threaded, fashion to keep track of the flow of a discussion. A new message created as a reply to a previous message will appear as a reply to another message in such threaded display modes and not be recognized as a new message.

Thread hijacking is generally considered a breach of netiquette and can cause ill feelings among other participants in the discussion.

[edit] Internet Forums

Thread hijacking in internet forum communication is the act of steering a discussion off-topic by discussing a subject entirely unrelated to the subject at hand.

While this can be an intentional act of trolling, it is often accidental - caused by participants in the discussion responding to a throwaway remark, thus taking the thread off at a tangent to the original subject matter. The results often provoke a feeling of resentment from the author of the original post.