122780 - Allow ordering threads by most *recent* message in thread

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 20385

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Michael Witbrock]

This is probably related to Bug 52156, but is not the same.

If one turns on mail message threading, which is potentially incredibly useful, 
one gets the following behaviour

> Message 1
     Message 2
Message 3
...   (56 intervening messages, meaning that when reading message 60, the thread
   for message 1 is not visible in the message list.
Message 60


Suppose now that message 61 arrives, and it's in the same thread as message 1.

You get 
> Message 1
     Message 2
     Message 61
Message 3
...   The big gap
Message 60

What happens now is that it enters the thread, but is effectively invisible to
the user, especially if other messages in the inbox are still marked as unread.
This makes threading about the same as auto-filing messages into anonymous
folders, and makes it almost useless. Which is too bad, since threads are
tremendously useful as a context mechanism,

I suggest adding a preference to allow 
  Sort threads by [first|most recent] message in thread

so that the situation I describe above will result in:


Message 3
...   The big gap
Message 60
> Message 1
     Message 2
     Message 61

possibly, in this case, the date on the thread when the thread is folded should
be the date of message 61.

I cannot begin to describe how much more productive this would make my use of mail.

Comment 1

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

Ooh, I'd love this. I like to keep mail sorted threaded, with the new stuff on
top... but unfortunately, since the sorting is by the thread's root message's
date, a new message into an old thread gets buried in its thread somewhere way
down. That makes it difficult to track current conversations and such. Getting
the most recently active thread to top in this case would be really neat.

I'm removing the word 'preference' from the summary, as it may cause people to
run away screaming. Hope that's okay with you :)

Comment 2

[David A. Cobb]

Well, personally, Youngest-First makes it tough to mentally put a thread
together as a conversation.  If I get to control the ordering *among siblings* I
would probably go the other way: Oldest-First.  If I /don't/ get to control it -
I'll be pretty darn disgusted.

Given that we should use some algorithm like Jaime Zawinski's to construct the
threads, IMO the siblings should be sorted by applying the same sort as the user
has selected for the root set.

Comment 3

[Michael Witbrock]

Yes, that level of control is what I intended when I posted the enhancement
request:  
Messages should be sorted oldest first (or youngest first) according to the
preference of the user.  Thread age ()and therefore where the thread appears
amongst other messages) should be set to the age of the *youngest* message in
the thread, not the oldest, as is currently the case.

Comment 4

[Jonas Jørgensen]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 20385 ***

Comment 5

[laurel]

marking verified as a duplicate