[Coco] Some List Oddities...

[Andrew]

I'd have to do a bit of research, but I honestly don't know who 
maintains or runs this list? I've been on it since 2004, and other than 
knowing "maltedmedia.com", I've never really looked into it further. My 
bad, I guess. So - hopefully someone knows the answers to some strange 
(or I think strange) things I've noticed.

So, since I joined this list (or close to it), I have kept a copy of 
almost every digest of emails to the list, all the way back to sometime 
in 2004, and I just threw them all into a folder in my mail client 
(thunderbird), and never gave it much thought, but recently I decided I 
had the time now (what with being unemployed, lockdown, virus, etc) to 
do a bit of organization.

So I decided to break each set down by year. What I have seen, and I am 
not sure why - is that when the volume number rolls over, sometime near 
the end of the year (and I haven't looked closely in the middle of a 
single year), it will skip a number! Has anyone noticed this?

So for instance - in 2019, the last two digests I have for 12/31/2019 
are labeled:

Coco Digest, Vol 209, Issue 46
Coco Digest, Vol 211, Issue 1

As far as I can tell - this kind of thing happens at the end of each 
year; sometimes the skip is on the same day (12/31) - sometimes - like 2018:

Coco Digest, Vol 196, Issue 51 (sent out on 12/30/2018)
Coco Digest, Vol 198, Issue 1 (sent out on 12/31/2018)

For 2017, the skip happened on 12/31 - from Vol 183 to 185.

It seems to happen every year - although it didn't happen in 2013!

Coco Digest, Vol 131, Issue 69 (sent 12/31/2013)
Coco Digest, Vol 131, Issue 68 (sent 12/31/2013)

But 2014 started with it skipped:

Coco Digest, Vol 133, Issue 1 (sent 1/1/2014)

Ok enough of that - I just find that weird that it is happening, and 
why? But another thing I have seen that I find odd:

Why do multiple digests get sent out per day. Sometimes there's only one 
digest, other times there could be 5 or more?

There doesn't seem to be a message queue count that remains steady (that 
is, each digest isn't exactly, say 10 or 15 messages each) - that seems 
random. Nor does it seem like the digest is sent out at a particular 
time periods per day (sometimes they seem close - but not close enough 
to say definitively that there is a pattern).

So what triggers the system to say "send out a digest"?

I'd personally think you should only get one digest a day, with however 
many messages were there for that day - or maybe 2 or 3 times a day? But 
again, just something curious I am witnessing.

Maybe there's a pattern here, and due to various system lags, enough 
time elapses between sends that it only appears somewhat random on the 
email timestamps, but it isn't?

Well - anyhow - I thought maybe someone out there might have an 
explanation, or at least might find this information interesting or 
amusing. It certainly amuses me as I re-organize these 20k+ or so email 
digests I've amassed!

-- 
Andrew L. Ayers
Glendale, Arizona
phoenixgarage.org
github.com/andrew-ayers