Threading problem in the new Yahoo interface

[Neri]

> Ceridwen:
> I noticed that, too, on the Banned Books thread, where it was very 
> noticeable.  I am trying out the option of sorting threads by date, 
> which is at the top of the thread tree.  It seems to work, the 
first 
> post is first, and not indented at all.
> 
> The difficulty with this system is that the posts appear by date, 
so 
> some are very indented, while others are not. 


Neri:
I believe I pinpointed the problem. The magic number is 30...

It seems that if the thread has more than 30 posts in it, the Yahoo 
threading function gives up. It's actually very easy to see for 
yourself. Here are the directions:

In the list site, click on "group by topic" (if you're not in this 
mode already). This will show you a list of the current threads, with 
the number of posts in each thread shown in the "messages" column. 
Start entering threads, scroll down and check the "thread tree" at 
the bottom. You'll find that if the thread has 30 posts  or less, 
then the thread tree looks the way it should, with upthread posts 
properly indented. If the thread has more than 30 posts, then only 30 
out of these posts will be shown. In these threads you'll often find 
many posts one below the other that are not properly indented. 

(Note: it's of course possible for several posts to appear one below 
the other with no indentation in any thread. This is OK when several 
members answered the same post. However, if more than 10 posts one 
after the other have no indentation and they include more than one 
post from some members, this probably means it's an error.)

This is obviously a bug in the new Yahoo interface. My guess is that 
Yahoo thought there would be very few threads of more than 30 posts 
anyway, so why bother. This is probably true in small lists, where 
it's indeed rare to have very large threads. I think we have to ask 
Yahoo to fix this problem. At the minimum, if they can't show the 
whole thread properly, then they should show only the one step 
upthread post and one-step douwnthread posts. 


Neri