[Coco] Mailing lists vs web forums (was: OS-9 Book)

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 29 June 2010, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 1:47 AM, Lothan <lothan at newsguy.com> wrote:
>> From: "Stephen H. Fischer" <SFischer1 at Mindspring.com>
>>
>>> There are more reasons that the world is going to web based forums, but
>>> then
>>> those who also use them know why already.
>>
>> There are also good reasons I dislike using web-based forums. Web forums
>> can't track what I have read vs. what I have not read; at best, they
>> record the last message I read or the last message that existed at the
>> time I last logged on. Many web forums don't even track what I've read
>> so it can be difficult keeping up with conversations in multiple
>> threads.
>>
>> Most web forums present flat threads so it can be difficult to track
>> individual threads of thought and long threads can be scattered across
>> 10 or more web pages, thereby making it even more difficult to keep up
>> with the last posts in each thread.
>>
>> There's also the issue of advertisements and ad tracking in web forums
>> that you typically don't get in a mailing list or newsgroup. The one you
>> mentioned for example is tracked by Google AdSense, Chikita, and
>> Quantcast.
>
>I'm involved with a few open source projects and monitor activity on
>several more.  All of them use mailing lists instead of web based
>forums.   Some of these are high profile, modern projects.  I don't
>see web forums replacing the mailing list any time soon.
>
>To me, a mailing list is vastly superior to a web forum.  Instead of
>visiting a dozen or so web pages just to know what is going on, I
>simply open my email.  I could organize messages in any fashion that
>I'd like with simple inbox rules (I don't, never saw much point in
>organizing my inbox :).  I can forward a message to someone not on the
>list directly from my email client, I can reply directly to someone
>rather than publicly just as easily, I use whatever editor I like to
>compose my messages, I can search years of content that spans several
>projects *and* my direct correspondence in one place, etc.
>
>If you are involved in many projects, mailing lists are the only way to
> go.
>
>There are some hybrid web + email things that might make everyone
>happy (if we are unhappy to begin with? :).  Actually the yahoo CoCo
>group is an example of this.  I've never quite understood how that
>ties to our list, seems we see their traffic but they don't see ours?
>Google Groups gets good reviews, and I've had no issues with it on the
>one project I'm part of that uses it, but this requires you to have a
>google account, I suppose yahoo groups have a similar limitation.

Yes it does Aaron, and since I won't touch yahoo with anything but a test 
ping because of their spam relay being wide open, I am locked out of looking 
at some projects thats based in yahoo.  When you have been on the net almost 
since there was a net, you run, not walk, away from anything yahoo.

Any outfit that tries to claim original copyright on any message ever 
carried by them (that was in their TOS for several years, I believe they 
lost a law$uit over it before it went away) is not an outfit I would trust 
even with a throwaway password.

As for the spam relay, I set up a script once back at about redhat 7.2 days 
to do a whois on every ip address in a five star or more message headed for 
/dev/null.  Well over 50% of it was coming from a yahoo box.  They have 
thousands of course so while a table could have been setup, the whois was 
positive ID. 

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Women, when they are not in love, have all the cold blood of an experienced 
attorney.
		-- Honor'e de Balzac