Lesson plan

Message-ID

Message-ID is a unique identifier for a digital message, most commonly a globally unique identifier used in email and Usenet newsgroups. Message-IDs are required to have a specific format which is a subset of an email address and be globally unique. No two different messages must ever have the same Message-ID. If two messages have the same Message-ID, they are assumed to be the same and one version is discarded. This can cause issues if tools mangle the IDs created by other tools. Such a problem has been reported with Google MTAs mangling Message-IDs created by Outlook, making it difficult to reference other messages and breaking threading. Message-IDs, if present, are generated by the client program sending the email or by the first mail server. A common method of generating such ID is by combining the time and domain name, for example: 950124.162336@example.com.

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Article summary

Message-ID is a unique identifier for a digital message, most commonly a globally unique identifier used in email and Usenet newsgroups. Message-IDs are required to have a specific format which is a subset of an email address and be globally unique. No two different messages must ever have the same Message-ID. If two messages have the same Message-ID, they are assumed to be the same and one version is discarded. This can cause issues if tools mangle the IDs created by other tools. Such a problem has been reported with Google MTAs mangling Message-IDs created by Outlook, making it difficult to reference other messages and breaking threading. Message-IDs, if present, are generated by the client program sending the email or by the first mail server. A common method of generating such ID is by combining the time and domain name, for example: 950124.162336@example.com.

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Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.