15 Jan
2003
15 Jan
'03
3:38 p.m.
In my quest to cover every aspect, to think about every permutation of what
ClassicCmp *could* be in the future, I have yet another question to ask
ClassicCmp subscribers: What if ClassicCmp were a weblog, in the style of
Slashdot or Kuro5hin?
I know many of you hold /. in disdain for whatever reason. I am not talking
about emulating the /. culture; I'm speaking only of its infrastructure,
purely in terms of being a web app for thread-based discussion.
The basics, as they apply to ClassicCmp, are:
- Posting and reading of messages would be doable from a web browser. An
email interface could be developed, but it wouldn't be the primary
method of participation.
- You would have an account with a username and password.
- Your account would be used for other features on the site, such as
access to a data archives, using to a buy-and-sell arena, or
moderating others' posts.
Right away, I see several benefits:
- Members can participate from any computer with a web browser. Even lynx.
- Anonymity and privacy can be more well-respected. The 'sender' of a
post is your username, not your email address. A system can be
implemented where another member can discover your email address only
after you give them permission to do so.
- Moderation could be less the subjective task that it is now, and more of
a distributed, many-eyes process. Imagine if you could vote on a post's
on-topicness on a scale of 1 to 5 (1=off-topic, 5=on-topic). Imagine if
you could set a minimum viewing level to screen out posts that were too
far into the OT side of the spectrum.
- There's no worry about HTML, attachments, wierd character sets, spam,
virii, or cctech moderation delay.
- Your inbox receives less clutter. You spend less bandwidth on mail.
- With thread titles on the front page, casual web visitors will be more
tempted to subscribe.
- It scales well as more members join and start posting.
- The forum *is* the archive.
- Features you want can be added in code, quickly. The current setup is
great for turn-key mailing lists and such, but it is tough to extend.
The bad points I see are:
- It's a huge change from the status quo. We may lose some members.
- Some people may find mailing lists more comfortable. Of course, an email
interface to the weblog could be developed.
My opinion: It's a good idea that I can implement in just a few months.
What is your opinion? Let's answer this one in-list, please.
--
Jeffrey Sharp
15 Jan
15 Jan
3:47 p.m.
- Posting and reading of messages would be doable
from a web browser. An
email interface could be developed, but it wouldn't be the primary
method of participation.
That immediately makes it undesirable from my perspective. I hate having to
log into web sites to post when I could have just sent E-mail (likewise, I
hate having to log in to read posts when they could be mailed to me).
If both can be supported, fine, but I strongly prefer E-mail.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Magic Eight Ball vs. Microsoft: "Outlook not so good" ----------------------
5:44 p.m.
On Wednesday, January 15, 2003, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I hate having to log into web sites to post when I
could have just sent
E-mail (likewise, I hate having to log in to read posts when they could be
mailed to me).
That could be solved by saving a cookie on your machine (if you so choose).
The next time you logged in, the cookie would get read and you'd be
automagically logged in. It isn't all that secure, but it is harder to spoof
than email.
If both can be supported, fine, but I strongly prefer
E-mail.
Would you tolerate putting a special 8-character authentication code
(automatically removed before delivery) into every ClassicCmp post to prove
that you were you?
One of the things that prompted me to think about all this was the inherent
spoofability of email. I feel a desire to find a way around it.
--
Jeffrey Sharp
6:10 p.m.
I hate having
to log into web sites to post when I could have just sent
E-mail (likewise, I hate having to log in to read posts when they could be
mailed to me).
That could be solved by saving a cookie on your machine (if you so choose). If both can be
supported, fine, but I strongly prefer E-mail.
Would you tolerate putting a special 8-character authentication code
(automatically removed before delivery) into every ClassicCmp post to prove
that you were you? One of the things that prompted me to think about all
this was the inherent
spoofability of email. I feel a desire to find a way around it.
... I'm not sure if making list members go through complex gyrations for
this is the best approach, or what specific event prompted it.
This isn't a personal slam or anything, but so far in my opinion the new
list system has worked out well and I'm unsure why it needs to be 'fixed'
if it isn't (particularly) broken -- unless you and Jay know something new.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Experience varies directly with amount of equipment ruined. ----------------
7:05 p.m.
On Wednesday, January 15, 2003, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
This isn't a personal slam or anything, but so far
in my opinion the new
list system has worked out well and I'm unsure why it needs to be 'fixed'
if it isn't (particularly) broken -- unless you and Jay know something
new.
No offense taken. I appreciate all the comments I've been getting so far.
Unless >=256 people say they like my idea, it is dumped. Like I said at the
beginning, it was just an idea. Exploratory. At this point, I'd still like a
dynamic web interface to *view* current list activity, but a full-on
blog/board-like system is out.
That still doesn't rule out having the data archive, marketplace, and
subscription management pages integrated under one username/password pair.
Worse case, I might write my own list manager. *That* might be an
interesting project.
I'm going to bed. I'll see how this thread develops after work tomorrow.
--
Jeffrey Sharp
8:38 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Jeffrey Sharp once stated:
No offense taken. I appreciate all the comments I've been getting so far.
Unless >=256 people say they like my idea, it is dumped. Like I said at the
beginning, it was just an idea. Exploratory. At this point, I'd still like a
dynamic web interface to *view* current list activity, but a full-on
blog/board-like system is out.
Here's a really radical idea: use a Wiki. Check out
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki
for an idea of what a WikiWikiWeb is like. Quite dynamic, purely text
driven (so far, all the Wiki's I've seen have been primarily text based) and
very open to every one (and that's one of the things that scares most
people).
Other than that, I still prefer email.
-spc (It's two way, and the closest thing to pure hypertext as I've seen
on the World Wide Web ... )
16 Jan
16 Jan
12:48 a.m.
At 02:41 AM 16/01/2003 -0500, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
Here's a really radical idea: use a Wiki.
Check out
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki
for an idea of what a WikiWikiWeb is like. Quite dynamic, purely text
driven (so far, all the Wiki's I've seen have been primarily text based) and
very open to every one (and that's one of the things that scares most
people).
Other than that, I still prefer email.
e-mail is much better in that you can do it off-line. Whilst most of time I'm
Internet connected, sometimes it's nice to download a pile of e-mail and escape
to the beach and read it off line. In my case, escape means no phone, ergo no
Internet.
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)kerberos.davies.net.au
| "If God had wanted soccer played in the
| air, the sky would be painted green"
17 Jan
17 Jan
4:05 a.m.
Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
...
That still doesn't rule out having the data archive, marketplace, and
subscription management pages integrated under one username/password pair.
Worse case, I might write my own list manager. *That* might be an
interesting project.
Data archive, as in something like a notebook, that members can view?
Sounds interesting.
All these ideas are definitely good ones.
--
---Dave Woyciesjes
---ICQ# 905818
15 Jan
15 Jan
7:25 p.m.
New subject: ADMIN: What if ClassicCmp were a blog? (cctech: addressed to trusted sender for this address)
That immediately makes it undesirable from my
perspective. I hate having to
log into web sites to post when I could have just sent E-mail
Agreed. And for those
of us not on a dedicated connection, being E-mail
based allows for much less time online.
If both can be supported, fine, but I strongly prefer
E-mail.
As an example of both being implemented, while not exactly the same as
outlined by Jeffrey, is http://www.vwtype3.org. I subscribe to the mailing
list, but there is also a web-based 'doorway', where non-subscribers can
read and post replies.
I think it would be a step backwards to be completely web-based, but if it
were similar to the way the cctalk and cctech are both doorways to the same
list, ie. the web site and the mailing list were different mediums for the
same content, I think it would be a great thing.
I would enjoy the SPAM protection offered by the blog, as well as the
moderation aspects, but personally, I would still use the E-mail list.
Dan
---------
"Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger."
James 1:19
8:15 p.m.
New subject: ADMIN: What if ClassicCmp were a blog? (cctech: addressed to trusted sender for this address)
On Wednesday, January 15, 2003, at 10:50 PM, Dan Dypsky wrote:
I would enjoy the SPAM protection offered by the blog,
as well as the
moderation aspects, but personally, I would still use the E-mail list.
Spam filtering borders on the trivial, man. Getting rid of a mailing
list to circumvent spam is sortsa like killing a disease by killing the
patient.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "She's a cheek pincher. I have scars."
St. Petersburg, FL -Gary Nichols
7:32 p.m.
Cameron Kaiser sez...
Second that for the same reasons.
Plus, emails are just so much more "archivable" than HTTP fetches... :-)
Cheers,
-RK
--
Looking for Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-1 through PDP-15 minicomputers!
Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices +1 613 599 8316.
Realtime Systems Architecture, Consulting and Training at www.parse.com
- Posting and reading of messages would be
doable from a web browser. An
email interface could be developed, but it wouldn't be the primary
method of participation.
That immediately makes it undesirable from my perspective. I hate having to
log into web sites to post when I could have just sent E-mail (likewise, I
hate having to log in to read posts when they could be mailed to me).
If both can be supported, fine, but I strongly prefer E-mail. 
16 Jan
16 Jan
4:17 a.m.
Nah, nix the blog idea. Heck, I'm wanting to go the other direction, and
make the mailing list archives searchable via email!
---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
15 Jan
15 Jan
4:54 p.m.
On Wednesday, January 15, 2003, at 09:41 PM, Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
In my quest to cover every aspect, to think about
every permutation of
what
ClassicCmp *could* be in the future, I have yet another question to ask
ClassicCmp subscribers: What if ClassicCmp were a weblog, in the style
of
Slashdot or Kuro5hin?
I think it would kill it in, oh, maybe 2-3 days.
There's a reason why what's left of the Philips "MCU" mailing list is
now run from my mail server...they changed it into a web-based deal and
everyone left.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "She's a cheek pincher. I have scars."
St. Petersburg, FL -Gary Nichols
5:56 p.m.
On Wednesday, January 15, 2003, at 08:53 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On Wednesday, January 15, 2003, at 09:41 PM, Jeffrey
Sharp wrote:
> In my quest to cover every aspect, to think about every permutation
> of what
> ClassicCmp *could* be in the future, I have yet another question to
> ask
> ClassicCmp subscribers: What if ClassicCmp were a weblog, in the
> style of
> Slashdot or Kuro5hin?
It's only appropriate to run this group on a technology which itself is
classic. MajorDomo is over 10 years old, so mailing lists qualify. :)
And as many others have said, text-only email (all else is an
abomination) is low bandwidth and will run on nearly anything, whereas
web access requires a ton of bandwidth and computing power. If we did
go with a web based system, we'd have to make it work with lynx. After
all, if you can't read it on a VT100, it's probably not appropriate to
this list.
-Jim (who is considering hooking a vt320 to a serial port on his OSX
(unix) mac...
--
Jim Strickland
jim(a)calico.litterbox.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------
MacOS X Powered!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------
17 Jan
17 Jan
3:59 a.m.
Jim Strickland wrote:
... After
all, if you can't read it on a VT100, it's probably not appropriate to
this list.
-Jim (who is considering hooking a vt320 to a serial port on his OSX
(unix) mac...
--
Jim Strickland
I wanted to do just that, before I got laid off from work, but couldn't
figure out how to get my boss to buy a serial port adapter for the G4...
--
---Dave Woyciesjes
---ICQ# 905818
15 Jan
15 Jan
5:15 p.m.
On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
Right away, I see several benefits:
- Members can participate from any computer with a web browser. Even lynx.
And
right now members can use any eMail client, even elm or
mutt... They're just as common, right?
- Anonymity and privacy can be more well-respected.
The 'sender' of a
post is your username, not your email address. A system can be
It surely
can't be hard to have the mailing list archival software munge
eMail addresses... It seems to be doing it now okay. Where's the problem?
- There's no worry about HTML, attachments,
wierd character sets, spam,
virii, or cctech moderation delay.
You can't attach eMails to the list can
you? (How do you attach a worm
therefore?). As for HTML and character sets, its a small inconvenience
honestly - not that many posters use it, after all.
- Your inbox receives less clutter. You spend less
bandwidth on mail.
Instead you spend it on all the extra HTML markup on web page
posts?
- It scales well as more members join and start
posting.
With a fine MTA (qmail anyone?) you can do alright, but I agree, a slick
mod_perl style web interface probably scales "better".
However, as my friend always used to say, when we are so logged with
traffic that we have scaling issues - well that will be a good day indeed
to know we are that popular, and dealing with it will be a joy.
(He was a Buddhist, what can I say)
- Features you want can be added in code, quickly.
The current setup is
great for turn-key mailing lists and such, but it is tough to extend.
What kind
of extra features?
This is just my two cents; I would rather not move to such a style of
list. I think classiccmp is wonderful the way it is.
Feel free to pick bones out of my retort.
JP
6:16 p.m.
On Wednesday, January 15, 2003, JP Hindin wrote:
Not at all. But messages delivered to subscribers aren't address munged. You
can look at the headers of this message and get my email address. I don't
think it's a big deal, but someone else might. I think more people would
join if they knew their email address would not be disclosed.
I know this aspect is fairly debatable. It wasn't the reason I cooked up the
web app idea. It was merely a "hrm, we could throw this in too" thought.
Distributed, score-based moderation, for one. My original post on the thread
describes it. That pretty much requires that Mailman be ditched. Jay and I
also have talked about doing some sort of a marketplace thing, too. Right
now, that would require a separate (from Mailman) username/password pair. I
would also like to create a data archive and give some people write access
to it via a web interface. That could be done with SSH but would require yet
another username/password pair. I am not impressed with the current state of
archivers, and would like to provide my own. It would be nice if all this
was integrated.
On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
IMHO, no. The trouble with MUAs is getting some way of either (a) serving
mail folders to remote locations or (b) serving the login session to remote
locations. Both of those are doable (IMAP, SSH) but can be a pain to set up
for some users. Then there's the problem of ensuring you have the right
software at the remote location (IMAP-capable email client, SSH client). In
some cases (e.g. student lab, internet cafe on vacation), you can't count on
that. In nearly every case, you *can* count on some form of web browser.
Right away, I see several benefits:
- Members can participate from any computer with a web browser. Even
lynx.
And right now members can use any eMail client, even elm or
mutt... They're just as common, right? - Anonymity
and privacy can be more well-respected. The 'sender' of a
post is your username, not your email address. A system can be
It surely can't be hard to have the mailing list archival software munge
eMail addresses... You can't attach eMails to the list can you?
Yes. If a message is accepted for deliver, it is delivered with only the
standard Mailman header modifications. No other filtering takes place. Of
course, we could do this now by piping messages through a filter before they
hit the Mailman posting script. Easy.
- Features you
want can be added in code, quickly. The current setup is
great for turn-key mailing lists and such, but it is tough to extend.
What kind of extra features? This is just my two cents;
I sincerely appreciate it.
--
Jeffrey Sharp
6:34 p.m.
On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
Thats
fair.
However - how many people would really fall into this category of being
completely unable to use an eMail client, of some form, and only a web
browser?
Statistically one would imagine a remarkably slim proportion... Why
inconvenience the many for the few?
Hmz. I am not everyone, but being that anonymous sounds really
stupid. Each to his own.
Thats really kinda... nasty.
Yippee. Lets forward 150k of image to a couple thousands users ;) I'm glad
I don't pay for your bandwidth!
Why? Why
can't you have your marketplace CGIs use the Mailman
equivalent of a passwd file?
I'm just trying to be difficult. I much prefer this format.
Things to think about perhaps.
JP
And right now
members can use any eMail client, even elm or
mutt... They're just as common, right?
software at the remote location
(IMAP-capable email client, SSH client). In
some cases (e.g. student lab, internet cafe on vacation), you can't count on
that. In nearly every case, you *can* count on some form of web browser. It surely
can't be hard to have the mailing list archival software munge
eMail addresses...
can look at the headers of this message and get my email
address. I don't
think it's a big deal, but someone else might. I think more people would
join if they knew their email address would not be disclosed.
I know this aspect is fairly debatable. It wasn't the reason I cooked up the
web app idea. It was merely a "hrm, we could throw this in too" thought.
You can't
attach eMails to the list can you?
Yes. If a message is accepted for deliver, it is
delivered with only the
standard Mailman header modifications. No other filtering takes place. Of
course, we could do this now by piping messages through a filter before they
hit the Mailman posting script. Easy. What kind of
extra features?
also have talked about doing some sort of a marketplace thing, too.
Right
now, that would require a separate (from Mailman) username/password pair. I
would also like to create a data archive and give some people write access 
5:51 p.m.
On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
- Some people may find mailing lists more
comfortable. Of course, an email
interface to the weblog could be developed.
That is my number 1 issue. I really don't like /.'s format. It's too
difficult to read through all the various messages. Plus you don't know
where you left off in a thread. I don't know, maybe I don't quite
understand /.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
6:47 p.m.
On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
In my quest to cover every aspect, to think about
every permutation of
what ClassicCmp *could* be in the future, I have yet another question
to ask ClassicCmp subscribers: What if ClassicCmp were a weblog, in
the style of Slashdot or Kuro5hin?
No offense, but, bleaaargh!
Using a web browser vs any halfway decent text interface e-mail client
(or a newsreader) is extremely inefficient in terms of the time it takes
to read/followup to anything. There's no way I'd have the time to wade
through hundreds of messages each week using a graphical or a text web
browser like lynx.
Really, I don't mind the notion of there being web based forums with
relevant news items or events, but don't get rid of the mailing list.
I think the ideas of the registry and some sort of trade-zone are both
very good and would be better areas of focus for web-efforts.
-brian.
7:09 p.m.
On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
In my quest to cover every aspect, to think about
every permutation of what
ClassicCmp *could* be in the future, I have yet another question to ask
ClassicCmp subscribers: What if ClassicCmp were a weblog, in the style of
Slashdot or Kuro5hin?
I vote "Yuck!"
I have yet to see a web-forum format that was at all easy to follow.
I've also seen a bunch of mail-based forums go web, and die. blogs and
Yahoo-style web forums seem to accrete trolls and shed serious members,
even when authenticated and moderated.
Whassa matta with Pine, anyway? We ain't fixed. Don't break us!
Doc
9:27 p.m.
Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
In my quest to cover every aspect, to think about
every permutation of what
ClassicCmp *could* be in the future, I have yet another question to ask
ClassicCmp subscribers: What if ClassicCmp were a weblog, in the style of
Slashdot or Kuro5hin?
It sounds like you are talking about a web board type thing. Please NO.
There are a few that I read from time to time, but they are a pain to
navigate, and email is so much easier! Web boards are what non-computer
people tend to use, in my opinion. I wish the various truck boards I
read were mailing lists!!!!
Chad Fernandez
Michigan, USA
11:13 p.m.
At 02:41 16/01/2003, Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
In my quest to cover every aspect, to think about every
permutation of what
ClassicCmp *could* be in the future, I have yet another question to ask
ClassicCmp subscribers: What if ClassicCmp were a weblog, in the style of
Slashdot or Kuro5hin?
In a word: Bleuch.
I've used all kinds of elecronic comms in my past, from BBS, Usenet,
mailing lists & web boards. IMHO, by far the best (in terms of threading,
bandwidth, etc.) has been Usenet. Therefore, if ClassicCmp was to change at
all, I'd prefer it to move to a Netnews server.
However, I'd be more happy if it didn't move at all...
There's been plenty of "no!!!" arguments here already, and mention has been
made of a dual interface (blog + mailing list) - and the latter is the one
I'd favour. By all means implement a blog, but make it an "as well as"
rather than "instead of". This would be useful to me, since I am
periodically away from my main computer (onto which all my e-mail arrives)
for several days at a time. Until I pull my finger out & get my own
internal mail server available to me, only client computers on my internal
network can pull mail from it, so when I'm away I don't get classiccmp -
and three other mailing list's - e-mails. So when away, I'd use the blog.
The one thing mailing lists don't do (or do well if they do do it) is
threading. Most e-mail clients wouldn't be able to make head nor tail of it
anyway. One of the few things that cheeses me off about ClassicCmp is
situations like last night - suddenly there's a whole scree of messages
waiting, and I've no idea what is in reply to what, unless some decent
quoting is involved. And I'm as guilty of that as anyone - Eudora, bless
it's cotton socks, sticks "At [time/date], you wrote:" whenever I quote a
message, which means I manually have to go put the name of the person I'm
replying to in there, and I frequently forget.
What is your opinion? Let's answer this one
in-list, please.
IMHO: By all means implement a blog, but don't remove or change the
existing e-mail interface - or, rather, by all means change it, but please
make those changes totally transparent to the user.
--
Cheers, Ade.
Be where it's at, B-Racing!
http://b-racing.com
16 Jan
16 Jan
9:08 a.m.
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text
Size: 2050 bytes
Desc: not available
Url :
http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/attachments/20030116/ffb49a0a/at…
10:03 a.m.
On 2003.01.16 03:41 Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
- Posting and reading of messages would be doable
from a web
browser. An email interface could be developed, but it wouldn't be the
primary
method of participation.
If this happens, I
will not be member of ClassicCmp any longer. Period.
- POP3ing the mails, reading and answering them offline and flushing the
spooled mail causes much, much, much less online time = EUR.
- I can use what ever MUA I want, without being forced to some web
interface that someone else _thinks_ is nice to use.
- A personal archive is easy to maintain with no / minimal work.
procmail is my friend.
- Why the fsck has everything to be done with some web interface? What
is wrong with the good, old mailing list approach?
A web site with a personal account for accessing a file area or the like
isn't bad and can be done without killing the mailing list.
--
tsch??,
Jochen
Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
17 Jan
17 Jan
4:57 a.m.
On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 08:41:31PM -0600, Jeffrey Sharp wrote:
In my quest to cover every aspect, to think about
every permutation of what
ClassicCmp *could* be in the future, I have yet another question to ask
ClassicCmp subscribers: What if ClassicCmp were a weblog, in the style of
Slashdot or Kuro5hin?
I know many of you hold /. in disdain for whatever reason. I am not talking
about emulating the /. culture; I'm speaking only of its infrastructure,
purely in terms of being a web app for thread-based discussion.
The basics, as they apply to ClassicCmp, are:
- Posting and reading of messages would be doable from a web browser. An
email interface could be developed, but it wouldn't be the primary
method of participation.
No.
- You would have an account with a username and
password.
No, thanks - even more username-password combos to keep track off. One
will end up either reusing those (very dangerous practice) or writing
them down (not much better).
- Your account would be used for other features on
the site, such as
access to a data archives, using to a buy-and-sell arena, or
moderating others' posts.
No need for that. Access to the archives should be free. A web-based
marketplace should IMHO not be tighhtly coupled with the list. And
frankly - I don't see the point in moderating posts around. No need to
emulate /.
Right away, I see several benefits:
- Members can participate from any computer with a web browser. Even lynx.
There are some heretics here - probably a lot more than on other lists -
who don't consider the WWW to be The Ultimate Interface (TM). And for good
reason. I get/send my mail in nice handy batches via UUCP (although not
via direct UUCP, but UUCP over TCP encrypted with SSL). EMail can be
read (and replied) to at the readers leisure, using whatever tool (mutt,
a very good textmode MUA in my case) prefers for the job. All the web
mailers I've seen so far just plain suck, _especially_ when compared to
good textmode MUA. The interface is slow, inflexible and just doesn't
scale. I'm handling around 300-500 mails a day (skimming some, reading
the interesting ones completely) - easy and quick task with the right
tool but tedious work with a webinterface. And don't get me started on
handling large folders (== 20000 mails and up - some lists are _very_
aktive) with bad tools (web interfaces or GUI MUAs).
- Anonymity and privacy can be more well-respected.
The 'sender' of a
post is your username, not your email address. A system can be
implemented where another member can discover your email address only
after you give them permission to do so.
Anonymity is seldom needed on mailinglists like this one and if it is,
one should use proper tools, not try to hide behind this kind of flimsy
screen.
- There's no worry about HTML, attachments,
wierd character sets, spam,
virii, or cctech moderation delay.
You'll strip all that crap out then? Fine. If not, things get worse.
- Your inbox receives less clutter.
There are tools to deal with _that_ problem. For me, procmail does a
great job sorting incoming mail into the right folders automatically -
including dealing with spam (which gets tagged by SpamAssassin on my
mailserver and dumped by procmail into a temporary holding folder).
- You spend less bandwidth on mail.
And ten times as much on web traffic, right.
- With thread titles on the front page, casual web
visitors will be more
tempted to subscribe.
Can be done without messing up the list. Just subscribe a bot to the
list, let it capture the thread titles and put them on a web page. Just
a little bit of Perl will do that for you.
- It scales well as more members join and start
posting.
Mailing lists scale a lot better.
- The forum *is* the archive.
Making an automatic archive is _trivial_: subscribe an archiving bot,
thats what I've done with one of the lists SWMBO reads. In come the
mails from the list, you get whatever archive you want (flat mbox,
threaded webinterface, database, whatever).
- Features you want can be added in code, quickly.
The current setup is
great for turn-key mailing lists and such, but it is tough to extend.
What features are _needed_ that can not be done with the mailinglist?
The bad points I see are:
- It's a huge change from the status quo.
And an unnecessary one to boot.
We may lose some members.
No. We _will_ lose members.
- Some people may find mailing lists more
comfortable. Of course, an email
interface to the weblog could be developed.
How about a one way gateway from the mailingliste to the web? A bot
subscribed to the mailinglist updating a web-archive of the list.
What is your opinion? Let's answer this one
in-list, please.
Sorry to rain on your idea - but I don't think it is a good idea.
Regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
7:53 a.m.
Alexander Schreiber wrote:
On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 08:41:31PM -0600, Jeffrey
Sharp wrote:
Yes, please! - And with a full-text search engine to allow for retrieval
of knowledge that had been asked for earlier, so I don't need to ask the
same question again.
OTOH, Google sometimes seems to do a fairly good job for this purpose.
So maybe we already have everything we need?
--
Andreas Freiherr
Vishay Semiconductor GmbH, Heilbronn, Germany
http://www.vishay.com
- Some people may find mailing lists more
comfortable. Of course, an email
interface to the weblog could be developed.
How about a one way gateway from the mailingliste to the web? A bot
subscribed to the mailinglist updating a web-archive of the list.
7858
days inactive
7860
days old
29 comments
20 participants
participants (20)
-
als＠thangorodrim.de -
Andreas.Freiherr＠Vishay.com -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
avickers＠solutionengineers.com -
doc＠mdrconsult.com -
dwoyciesjes＠comcast.net -
dypstick＠dypstick.net -
fernande＠internet1.net -
foo＠siconic.com -
Huw.Davies＠kerberos.davies.net.au -
jim＠calico.litterbox.com -
jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de -
jplist＠kiwigeek.com -
jss＠subatomix.com -
jwest＠classiccmp.org -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
root＠parse.com -
spc＠conman.org -
spectre＠stockholm.ptloma.edu -
vaxzilla＠jarai.org