Might it help to put the subject line first and the sender's name
second, rather than name-subject as the new form is now? That way a
lexicographical sorting would at least collect subject lines together.

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 6:10 AM, Humberto Barreto <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
> Thanks for the feedback and I hope others may have a solution -- I
> never dreamed that someone would keep the messages on their own hard
> drive.
>
> I can explain the choice I had and the one I selected. Before my
> university went to Google Apps (gmail), I used a sophisticated, hidden
> feature of Eudora (and the number of IT people who didn't know this
> was possible supports my word choice) to edit submitted messages and
> repost them to the list under the sender's name. My editing consists
> of cleaning up typos, removing sometimes very long trails, and so
> forth. With gmail, I can edit, but I cannot make the message appear
> under the original sender's name. I tested repeatedly and had techies
> at my university, York, and Syracuse helping and every trick failed.
>
> Under pressure to keep posting messages, I was forced to choose between:
>
> A) Messages come from the sender, but I can no longer edit them. This
> is what most lists do.
>
> B) Messages come from me and I can edit them.
>
> I chose B. I understood the cost in terms of the loss of the original
> sender's name, but it seemed to me that the ability to search messages
> enabled the archive to function. As I said above, I did not consider
> the cost to someone who keeps messages on their HD. Sorry about that.
>
> I'm not sure, however, that incorporating this cost changes my
> decision. The ability to edit is critical. For many of our
> subscribers, writing in English is difficult and I have been thanked
> for light editing many times. I think the conversations on this list,
> decades from now, will be a valuable resource and having relatively
> clean messages (especially without trails) is important. I agree that
> the old archive was ideal because it had edited messages AND the
> original sender's name, but when forced to choose, I went with the
> former. I suppose you could argue that it's a false choice and there
> is some tech solution, but I just couldn't find it.
>
> Perhaps, Steve, you could use the subject line and time stamp to
> organize the messages? Maybe others have workarounds?
>
> To all, if there are other problems with this new system or you value
> having the original sender's name over editing, please let me know.
> I'm just the moderator and I will do want the list wants -- if I can!
>
> Humberto Barreto
> [log in to unmask]
>

-- 
Paul Turpin, Ph.D.
-- - -- --- -- - -- --- -- - -- --- -- - -- --- -- - -- --- -- - -- --- --
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication
Senior Fellow, The Jacoby Center for Public Service & Civic Leadership
University of the Pacific, 3601 Pacific Ave., Stockton CA 95211
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