> There are two things that can create this kind of problem: This implies, but does not state categorically, that *only* two things could be the cause. > 1. If the logs are edited, Marty Hoag, who (re)opened this discussion, is the person who would have edited the log if that had actually been done. He implies that he didn't do it. Who else could have? The list owners are on remote systems and unlikely to tamper with nitty-gritty stuff. > detect the separation between messages, it has to rely on the presence > of a separator line followed by a valid header. If a user posts a > message containing a separator line and another valid message header, This sounds bizarre. Maybe Marty wasn't looking for this particular problem, but he *did* mention noticing that the first three messages of the aberrant index were (would have been) dated from the preceding month and had apparently been delayed en route to LISTSERV. Surely, this is an interesting coincidence and worth considering as a possible symptom of a *third* way of getting mismatched message numbers. John