hm, reading the threads in the list archive
is an option that I often use, too, and it is independent of any mail program ;-)
example, by thread, this month:
On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 4:28 PM, Karen Sue Rolph
<karenrolph(a)hotmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Dear esteemed colleagues,
<snip>
I recently referred to Anita S. I don't know
her, don't know how she
would be contacted, Andreas. I don't know if she contributes to Wikipedia,
even. Anyone who might have weighed in without first exploring the nature
of her work missed it's essence. Evidence is useful to this forum and its
mission.
KSRolph
Dear Karen,
I have contacted Anita, and hope she will have time to look in.
(As for the threading of topics, I suspect that gmail handles the thread
structure better than hotmail. In gmail, all the posts that belong to a
given topic always appear together, in one long list, so it's easier to see
what preceded any given post.)
Best,
Andreas