This is a support forum, not a developer/feedback forum. We don't need your anger here. We're volunteers and are prepared to assist users in unsetting the thread default.

I fully agree with the original poster. Yes Thunderbird is (mostly) staffed by volunteers. There is no other way to express anger or dissatisfaction with decisions. Most users do not participate in even opinions on future directions and decisions because it is just too complicated and almost impossible to even find out how to get started.

Users are allowed to be angry! They are allowed to be dissatisfied! They are allowed to have STRONG views! Just because its all open source and done by volunteers does not make it sacrosanct from (strong) criticism

The original anger was directed to the Thunderbird decision makers as a group not to the volunteers as individuals providing help. Perhaps a more diplomatic wording would have been more appropriate in the original post but also just ignoring it would also have been more appropriate in this particular case.

I always think having badges or rating systems on contributors encourages volunteers to answer, and based on my personal observations, it has led to a lessening of the effectiveness of the help provided.

I stopped using this help method for both Thunderbird & Firefox because the system has evolved to a lot of people offering help that either does not address what the user actually wanted or goes off on tangents. The people that I know are not helpful always seem to be the first to answer and I think it is in the quest for badges or statistics.

I cannot argue that the decision for threaded seems to have been arbitrary, ignoring the thousands of users who have lived happily without it. If you wish your voice to reach developers, it's not here. You might try connect dot mozilla dot org or bugzilla. The issue has been raised multiple times and the only response has been the series of steps to undo threading. Reverting to an unthreaded default seems off the table. There is a fork of Thunderbird, built from same source library, that does not default to threading. It's name is betterbird and is at betterbird dot eu. That's where it is today: Thunderbird with threaded or Betterbird without. And, that badge to which you think we all crave, it's given after responding to 30 questions. No stats to compete for. As a volunteer, I receive several 'thank you' letters a day and an equal number of less appreciative comments. Thanks for sharing your opinion.

Thanks for the reply David As far as the badge thing goes I don't think you all crave them. I actually read about Betterbird (and the reason it forked..developers can be so temperamental and as an outside observer its hard to work out the reality of these sort of situations)

It seems to me to be really hard for endusers (us) to be able to influence decisions about future directions. We can complain after the fact but most wont. That is why we end up with this default thread disaster that causes so much angst. I started out with Eudora and at its demise moved to Thunderbird, so that should tell you how long I have been an TB user. Betterbird posting reads like a bloke pretty childish taking his bat and ball and going home. I may try it but I am leaning more to going away from Mozilla altogether. If Vivaldi would implement a master password or a password manager add on you would not see me for dust.

By the way I also got another email from Mozilla Support thanking me for my first post. It is rubbish. This is not my first post, it may well be for Thunderbird but not for Mozilla. That email is just purely unsolicited junk email! If this is their idea of quality control no wonder Thunderbird forked. No wonder endusers get mad.