[plug] Mailing list messages

[Bret Busby]

John Summerfield wrote:
>
<snip>

> Adding further sequencing information would simply clutter the subject
> field in an effort to solve a problem better fixed elsewhere, perhaps in
> the choice of software,

So, softyware is supposed to sort messages according to fields, apart from
sender, or date, or suject, or, the commonly used fields?

I can imagine the response of people like Netscape, etc, to comments like that.

Surely, it is easier, to modify a mailing list's setup?

> 
> > It is a bit weird, to read a message, then, a few, or, several,
> > messages later, to read the message that the first message was
> > responding to, when the messages are sorted in  order of the date/time
> > field.
> 
> Get used to it: happens all the time in lots of different lists. It's
> caused by varying delays in different parts of the Internet.

Wrong! That does not explain why a message that was received a couple of hours
ago, had the time of 1900, on 29 July 1999.

I realise that WA is behind the rest of the world, but it is not that far
behind!

The problem comes, primarily, from different people having different system
times set.

It is unfortunate to get this type of respone; "Like it or lump it!"; I thought
that this mailing list was supposed to be a way of fixing problems, or, finding
ways to fix them, rather than telling people to just put up with problems,
because they exist.

Still, I suppose, such is life...

> 
> >
> > If the numbering of the messages could be done, this way, it would
> > make reading the messages a bit more meaningful, as the messages could
> > then be sorted in order of the subject field.
> 
> That would, at best, help with one list. Software that can recognise and
> use the existing sequencing information fixes it for every list.
> 
> It is, I think, an even worse idea than adding the list's name to the
> subject field.

Why?

Bret Busby
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