Hi,

I'm just curious how you handle long threads. After a thread gets long enough with lots of sub-branches, it gets very frustrating to follow all the particular subranches and see where the new posts are. Of course, flat mode is good for reading all the posts, but for longer threads with multiple subthreads it's too easy to get lost in what sub-thread you are in. If you use threaded mode, I keep having to go forward and backwards as I read one post at a time. And for longer threads when I go back to the thread list, I have a hard time figuring out which was the last post I read. This is especially true when there are a lot of back and forth replies between two people, e.g., Pilgrim-John-Pilgrim-John-Pilgrim..... The ideal solution would be like a usenet newsreader does and have a two-paned window. One pane has the thread list and the other pane has the currently viewed post. I guess this is difficult to achieve in a web browswer though.

There have been several interesting discussions that I wanted to continue to participate in but after they got too long I just gave up. Not because of lack of interest, but because of frustration with following the discussion.

Suggestions would be welcome.

John