1. A method of automatically sorting electronic documents by their temporal characteristics with a computing system comprising: a. providing a set of temporal ordered electronic documents related to an event, which event is associated by the computing system with a plurality of corresponding event states defined for a progress template for such event; wherein said event states are associated by the computing system with content distinctive to different temporal periods within said progress template; b. wherein each of said set of temporal ordered electronic documents is associated with a temporal value established by the computing system, and wherein said temporal value is not any of a creation time alone, a publication time alone, or a combination of a creation time and a publication time alone; c. comparing the contents of a separate first electronic document with the computing system to the contents of one or more electronic documents in said set of temporal ordered electronic documents to determine a closest content match document; d. with the computing system, determining if said separate first electronic document and said closest content match document based are substantial duplicates; filtering one of said separate first electronic document and said closest content match document when they are determined to be substantial duplicates; comparing said first electronic document to said closest content match document when they are determined not to be duplicates to identify temporal differences with the computing system, including by comparing first content identifying a first state for the event in said first electronic document to second content identifying a second state for said event in said closest content match document; e. generating a temporal related value for said first electronic document based on steps (c)-(d) with the computing system, which temporal value is derived from comparing said first state and said second state for said event and identifying their respective temporal periods within said progress template; and f. adjusting a temporal order of said set of temporal ordered documents as needed with the computing system based on said temporal related value determined for said separate first electronic document.