System and Method Enabling Future Messaging Directives Based on Past Participation via a History Monitor

A system and method for controlling the flow of documents by associating Globally Unique Identifiers with each original document, each reply document, each copy document and each forwarded document, such as email messages. Historical analysis is performed on a locally stored history records containing the Globally Unique Identifiers extracted from received documents to determine which recipients are active participants and which are inactive participants, according to user preferences and thresholds. Lists for direct recipients (e.g. "To" list), carbon copy recipients, and blind copy recipients are automatically proposed to a user of a document handling system when authoring a new document, replying to a document, or forwarding a document, according to the results of the historical participation analysis, thereby stemming information flow to participants who are not active in an ad hoc asynchronous conversation.