On 07/18/2011 01:00 PM, Les Mikesell wrote: > On 7/18/2011 11:25 AM, ?? ?? wrote: >>> So do you typically provide helpful answers to forum questions sooner >>> after they are posted when you have to forum-hop than you would if they >>> land in your inbox or later? >> Obviously some level of activity must be maintained within a community >> to ensure decent response times, but newer communities such as Ubuntu >> have found forums to be a fairly useful thing. The forum community there >> is doing well and questions get answered at a reasonable pace -- with >> the added benefit that when someone goes on vacation they have no box >> that needs filtering, unsubscribing, setting in a vacation state, etc. >> to protect from lists or spam. Outside of the tech world forums have >> proven themselves durable and usable for help and feedback purposes -- >> overwhelmingly so. > I don't think Ubuntu is a reasonable project example unless you can come > up with a way to match it's resources, which I believe include paid > participants. Who is going to hover over a forum waiting to answer > questions otherwise? > >>>> So... what is wrong with newsreaders? In my experience the provide all >>>> the benefits of email (speed, uniform interface, etc.) that you listed >>>> as well as all the benefits of a post/fetch paradigm that I get from >>>> forums without any of the hassles of either. >>> Interesting that you bring this up in the context of spam. The problem >>> with net news is that all of the servers stopped handling it because of >>> the porn and copyright-infringing binaries postings that overwhelm it. >> Newsreaders require a news server. News servers can be run by anyone, it >> doesn't require a global cabal to serve news. In the later days of >> usenet it was overwhelmed by crap, largely because of the enormous >> number of groups created by people who didn't have time to maintain >> them, had a blanket anonymous publish policy, and eventually never >> showed back up to take care of their lists. > You make it sound accidental. That's not the way I remember it. > >> What I am describing is the running of a newsgroup server specific to a >> project or interest, say news.centos.org (or whatever for whatever). >> Initial validation would be required (not unusual for mailing lists) for >> initial posting, and after that unmoderated publication would be >> permitted by a validated user. This is a simple system. Disabling >> attachments and/or setting file/message size limits is trivial and is an >> action which occurs in just one place (the server) and doesn't bother >> the users. > So if you have 100 interests, you'd have to establish and maintain 100 > logins and passwords - and configure them on every device/application > you use for access. That's not my idea of convenience. > >> From an anti-spam/security perspective a post/fetch system is simply >> more suitable for noise-free discourse than email. > I just don't see the distinction other than having more possibility of > after-the-fact cleanup before delivery - and then only if someone goes > to the trouble of doing it and you are slow in your fetching. > >> That we have >> forgotten that is likely more due to the timing of the web explosion in >> the early 90's and the tech/generation gap it produced than anything >> else. > Ummm, no. There was always a lot more crap posted to usenet than there > is here. Maybe you've forgotten that. > >>> A news service with censorship might be OK. Until they censor something >>> that you wanted to say or see. Forums with rss feeds might be a middle >>> ground to centralize the reading side but there's still the issue of >>> standardizing the forum interfaces so you don't have to figure out how >>> to reply again for every interesting topic. >> You have just described properly run newsgroups -- and why I am >> suggesting them as a reasonable course of action which would resolve >> spam issues not just within list, but limit everyone's exposure to spam >> in their general mail boxes. > The protocol for the transfer doesn't really matter here. What you > propose isn't particularly different than setting up local email service > with accounts for all users for every list. That is, it would be > equally inconvenient and not solve any of the underlying problems. > Hmm... I am on a number of ML one of which is LKML and I find the amount of spam is miniscule in comparison to the number of messages. Also trying to keep up with all the topics and new threads on any forum I have been on seems much more difficult than on any mailing list. I have thunderbird setup to read mail threaded and if its a thread I am not interested a simple CTL-t marks any new messages as read. My $.02 Regards, Steve -- Stephen Clark *NetWolves* Sr. Software Engineer III Phone: 813-579-3200 Fax: 813-882-0209 Email: steve.clark at netwolves.com http://www.netwolves.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20110718/1f7d3a22/attachment-0005.html>