If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So, only changes which really do help. That seems to be Max's approach too, fortunately, and the changes flagged up sound like they will smooth things along.

I quite like the feeling that it is up to us to decide when a thread is getting too long, and start a part two or three, rather than having it too mechanical. Generally speaking people don't post to the old one much.

The problems arise more when someone starts a part two or three without putting a link to it in the old thread; or without putting a link to the old thread inthe new thread. It's not hard to do it, but if there were some simplified gizmo it might be helpful - if wqe could click a button next to the submmit button saying "start new part-thread", and that'd be taken care of by the magic machine.

However, as it is, over time more of us learn the tricks, like sticking in links to other relevant threads and so forth, and maybe that's the best way. (And if it hadn't been for the Mudcat I wouldn't have learnt even the basic HTML wrinkles I have, and they are very handy.)

But it's amazing how well this whole thing hangs together, when it'd be so easy to have "improvements" that would wreck it, which is what seems to happen to most good things.