From: "Robert Comer" 

> I think it's pretty simple, you just ensure that there's no contradiction
> between the dates of the message referenced and this message.

Yes, but you have to parse entire threads to do that, and some threads can
get pretty big. And who's to know that the message it finds as first in a
current thread doesn't have a bad date/time, moving the whole thread out of
place.

> Every server an email travels through timestamps it, so I don't see a
> problem there. In OE you can display the 'received' time and or the
> 'sent'. You'll still get questions arriving after answers though,
> depending on routes and how a mailing list server batches its output.

Not if the posting time is the original servers receiving time.  but
anyway, this is less of an annoyance for me, but still it's the same
problem where the client is being trusted for the original send time and it
shouldn't be.

> The answer is Web based bulletin boards, rather than tweaking old
> protocols that generally work rather well.

Ick.  It does fix this problem but makes using the newsgroups themselves
ever so much harder. (lack of speed being the most annoying
"feature" of web based newsgroups)

- Bob Comer



"Paul Ranson"  wrote in message
news:41911a47$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> "Robert Comer" 
wrote in message
> news:41910798$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>> What you really want is a more intelligent display mode, that uses the
>>> time except when contradicted by the 'references' field. Or some way of
>>> easily controlling the date of the first message to display, so you can
>>> preserve the tree structure and simply adjust its root.
>>
>> That would be good, but I don't think it would be all that easy to
>> implement.
>
> I think it's pretty simple, you just ensure that there's no contradiction
> between the dates of the message referenced and this message.
>
>> It just fixes a symptom though, rather than the underlying cause.  I
>> really think the news (ad email) specs were written for another day on
>> controlled systems, but for the masses, and it's time we update them.
>> This kind of change could be implemented only on the servers (and easily
>> at that), clients don't even need to know there was a change. And if you
>> really want to make sure it's the correct time, have the server syncing
>> the clock with one of the timekeeper systems -- auto set, auto
>> timezone --  very doable for a server.
>
> Every server an email travels through timestamps it, so I don't see a
> problem there. In OE you can display the 'received' time and or the
> 'sent'. You'll still get questions arriving after answers though,
> depending on routes and how a mailing list server batches its output.
>
> The answer is Web based bulletin boards, rather than tweaking old
> protocols that generally work rather well.
>
> Paul
>

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