You  can't get  message ID's  in  logs. The  most common  way of  quoting
messages posted to a list is to  list the name and address of the sender,
along  with  the  date.  Barring  software failures,  this  is  a  unique
combination  and it  is  more  convenient than  an  arbitrary message  ID
string: to locate the message in your folder, you will normally only need
to search  for a part  of the  date, or of  the sender's name,  and there
won't be more than  a handful of matches. The date  and poster's name are
everyday items which are easy to memorize for long enough to scan the log
and find the message.
 
Unfortunately, there  are people who  think it  is "chic" to  quote other
postings this way:
 
   Quoted from message with ID <[log in to unmask]>:
   > blah blah blah
 
There is  no simple way  to shorten the message  ID string for  a search.
Message ID's being usually based on  large arbitrary numbers, you stand a
good chance of mistyping it anyway. Even  if you were to search for, say,
just 6828, you would probably have forgotten the original string when you
do find  something with 6828 in  the log. Not to  mention the subscribers
who get  short headers and thus  no message ID  at all. So what  is wrong
about using sender+date?
 
  Eric