Without thinking about it, I have developed some thread analysis methodologies (although they may be sew sew in value).

Of course, interesting (to me) title tend to get my attention fastest but I have found it's worthwhile going to topics that seem to persist and get up into thirty responses or so. There is a good chance that the discussion has taken an interesting turn, sometimes for no other reason than thread creep. I find those longer threads very often worth the wait. Of course, long threads are not a gurantee that the discussion will be interesting but the odds get better when there are familiar names in the list of posters that comes up first. While the rest of a long thread is being fed to my computer, I look that over. There are some people whose postings and thoughts I almost always am glad to have read so I'll hang in there while my computer digests the wealth of messages flowing over from a long thread.

In defense of Thread Creep: Some of the most interesting material I've seen here is the result of thread creep.

Sourdough