On 07/18/2011 02:37 PM, Steve Clark wrote: > 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. oops should have been just 't' not ctl-t. -- 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/e9f0ddd3/attachment-0004.html>