[TriLUG] trilug mailing list archives

[Jeremy P]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Mike Broome wrote:

> 
> Churning the names of the pages throughout the month seems like a bit of
> an odd scheme.  Out of curiosity, what software controls this aspect?
> mailman?  pipermail? (or is that part of mailman?)  htdig?  some custom
> scripts?

It's done by pipermail, which is a formerly separate tool that was sucked
into mailman; so you can really consider it part of mailman.  I think it
has to do with the threading mechanism...  since messages are added to
threads in a random fashion, this affects the numbering.  It may also have
to do with the fact that the tool uses the date on the message, rather
than the actual arrival timestamp.  Due to vagarities of the Internet (and
computers with incorrect date/time), a later-arriving message might be
sorted earlier, if it had an earlier timestamp.

The previous months aren't completely protected, either:  I could screw up
the May archive numbering, for example, by changing my computer's clock
back a month and sending a message with a May date.  This would then be
added to the appropriate May archive listings, possibly renumbering many
other messages.  Readers, please do not test this at home.  :)
 
> Now that I know how it works, I s'pose I can live with it.  The only
> time it's a pain is if I want to send someone the URL of a post in the
> archive that's less than a month old.

Actually, despite all the previous conversation, the trilug at trilug.org
list actually archives weekly, not monthly... :)

--Jeremy