On Tuesday 06 February 2001 14:33, Conrad Schneiker wrote:
>
> However, over the past few days, I've seen several cases where a
> lower-numbered post has arrived considerably later (several hours later in
> one case) after batches of higher number posts. Does anyone know whether
> this sort of thing is fairly widespread? And does anyone know if this is
> typically an internal e-mail system problem? Or does the Internet itself
> sometimes somehow contribute to this phenomenon?
>

I haven't noticed this particular on the Ruby list, but then again I haven't 
really been paying attention to it. I _do_ notice it on other lists to which 
I am subscribed and more particularly comments about it happening on these 
lists. 

There are a lot of variables involved between the time a post leaves my 
machine and comes to yours (or vice versa) and even more so when you mix in 
the fact that the news group and the mail list are linked, so we shouldn't be 
surprised at this happening.

Through the last few weeks I have found the numbering to be more convenient 
than not, especially since it is so easy to refer to specific posts that way 
(and find them!) which a lot of us seem to have been doing lately.

OTOH I know some of us are finding it a pain because we like to organize via 
thread, but as I have not been prone to do that the numbers don't bother me 
in that way. I tend to organize by key words (my mail is all mbox formatted 
so keyword searches are rather trivial) and sometimes the subject lines don't 
really refer to the topic it all (less so here in Ruby than on many of the 
other lists I subscribe to, though)

Regards,

Kent Starr
elderburn / mindspring.com