Re: getting list emails out of order

["Simon Coulter" <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Hello Dan,

You wrote:
>The incoming mail is being sorted date/time *received* and not by
>*sent*.  Before last week, I was sorting by *sent*, and it worked better
>than *received* sequence most of the time.

If I recall correctly the SENT timestamp is supposed to be GMT which would 
make it more reliable for sequencing than received timestamp.  However, that 
relies on people having their computer and/or mail program correctly 
configured and from what I see that is not the case.  It seems that most 
people do not have their timezone set correctly and thus their local time is 
interpreted as GMT which basically stuffs up the entire sort process.  
(Notwithstanding mail programs that pay no attention to the timezone setting 
anyway.)

Of course, that doesn't help with the vagaries of the Net where different 
items may take different routes and thus later items may take a faster route 
and arrive earlier (items in this sense are the complete mail item rather 
than the TCP packets which may arrive in any order but are reassembled and 
delivered in the proper order).  I see David mentioned in another note that 
he is sending each item to 10 people at a time which I think would 
contribute to the disordering sequence.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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