Theoretically you could construct an index to a long thread that might look like this (with one line per message in the original thread):

Songs about getting really old?

Peter T-------------------06-Oct-97 11:44 AM
This is a companion ("cf. Old Friends, Simon and Garfunkel") to the other thread "Songs ...
S.P. Buck Mulligan-------06-Oct-97 12:39 PM
Peter: I have a few for you: "Hello In There" by John Prine, "The Dutchman" by Mike ...
Harold-------------------06-Oct-97 01:19 PM
Peter, the Beatles sung "When I get older.." and not "When I get really old" ! Then you ...
Bill D--------------------06-Oct-97 02:13 PM
"Over the Hills to the Poor House"..old country/bluegrass number and "The Black Sheep"...
Alice---------------------06-Oct-97 02:30 PM
There are "Silver Threads Among the Gold" (in the DT) and "Darling Nellie Gray", "The ...

It's a bit tedious to construct, if you have to construct it manually like I did, but maybe the process could be automated. Maybe Max could even include this in a future version of Mudcat!

It's tedious to use, too, if you want to read a whole thread. But very convenient to use if you only want to read a few messages. And better than nothing if you can't load the whole thread.