Users who haven't been keeping up with the mailing list for a while and want to catch up on what they've missed might want to be able to easily access posts from a certain period of time.

They might have a very specific block of time that they want to see or a vaguer notion of the time (i.e., two months ago, within the last two weeks, or between July 10th and 12th). Thus, they may prefer being able to specify a block of time that is more specific than viewing messages by month, like the current solution.

They can use the archives to find all conversations from a certain period of time.

1. A form can be presented with a start date and an end date for the user to input. After the user enters these, the archives will display all messages posted between those two days.
2. Then, a list of conversations from the selected range of dates can be displayed. Since the user wants to figure out which messages were missed during the time gone, each of these messages should have a date next to it, indicating the time of post. This may help them decide which messages are new.