A solution would be for the retweet to reappear in your timeline each time someone retweets it, as it does now, but each time with an update on the number of people doing it. I presume that Twitter tried this, though, and I guess they decided not to go for it because although it might confusing to have a tweet from someone you don't follow in your timeline, it'll be even more confusing if that tweet just won't go away, and keeps reappearing.

If this was all they'd got wrong (and assuming issues like people with clients not seeing new RTs, and RTs from people you've blocked being visible etc etc are all short term (ahem - I think they're approaching medium term now ...)) there probably wouldn't be much of a problem.

However, I think this issue that you're prevented from seeing other RTs IS a big problem. I may not have explained it all that well.

Let's imagine somebody does something illiberal. Stephen Fry tweets "X has done Y. Get your pitchfork and flaming brand". I don't follow Stephen, but someone I follow - let's call them Z - new-RTs it almost immediately and I see it.

Is this going to turn into the new Trafigura / Jan Moir? And if it did, how would I know? I leave my computer, and 5 minutes later the Z's RT of Stephen Fry's tweet has vanished down my timeline and out of sight.

Now, imagine X doing Y is so awful that 200 people I follow new-RT Stephen Fry's original tweet.

I don't see any of those RTs. In some ways this is good - what a mess my timeline would be ... On the other hand, I have no way of knowing that this is going on. If I looked back at Z's RT of Stephen Fry (EG I scrolled back and back through time, or I opened the tweet via its permalink) it would now say 'retweeted by Z and 200 others'.

But under the current new-RT system, that's the only way I've got of knowing that 200 people I follow have new RTed something.

Even worse, I could have missed properly seeing / taking in Z's retweet (maybe when I loaded the webpage it was at the bottom and I got distracted by something at the top and so didn't read the last few tweets on the page), in which case I'd never know.

Or I might think Z is a bit of an idiot, and so not give credence to his RTs. Q on the other hand, I do respect - but I can't see the fact that he has new-RTed Stephen Fry because Twitter has hidden this from me.

Right, is that any clearer to anyone?!?

Therefore, if you do want to add something yourself, or change the wording, or whatever, why not use the other (via @someoneorother) style of retweeting (what Tweetie calls 'quote tweet'). It means that both forms are useful and things are a little clearer. Of course it only works if everyone starts doing it...

I see quite a few tweets from people saying 'well just don't use it if you don't like it'.

But I think they're missing the point that if person A new-RTs something, then I won't see that person B, C, D ... and ZZ has new-RTed it later.

So it's not just a matter of me not using it. It's the fact that other people influence which (re)tweets by third parties that you see.

I noticed Emma Forbes in my stream the other day, I don't follow Emma Forbes. It took me a couple of minutes to work out exactly why; a tweet devoid of context and explanation is pretty hopeless and I suspect this new function with lead to a lot of pointless, de-contextualised RTing - and where's the value in that?

I think the whole feature is another badly thought out change in functionality that will diminish the usefulness of the Twitter system in much the same way as the change in showing @replies did, possibly even more.

I very rarely even look at the web interface, so anyone using that to retweet will go completely unnoticed by me, and probably many others. I wonder how long it will take them to feel like their retweets are being ignored?