I know, I know, some long threads are unintelligible after morphing three or
four times, but my strategy to manage long threads is to read the last post
first, hoping to follow it back to the original post, or at least to have
relevant recent posts in it to read.

It's much faster than clicking on 27 individual messages to try to figure
what's been said and whether it's something I can contribute to.

For those of you using digest mode, give it up, it's useless.  Just set up a
folder and a rule to send all vanagon.com emails into it (I actually send
vanagon, subaruvanagon, Westfalia, and Adventurewagen email into it), and
sort it by subject (turn off your sound alerts too).  This is much faster
and easier than trying to use a digest posting, and text email takes a
trivial amount of space and bandwidth.

Give it a try!

Stuart

'85 Westy, and well over 200 emails a day I manage this way