Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Tim Cross]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 8:52 AM, Glenn Morris <address@hidden> wrote:
> Tim Cross wrote:
>
>> I personally don't like web based forums and I find my participation
>> in mail list based groups is far less.\ than for newsgroups.
>
> A mailing list is not the same thing as a "web based forum" (I dislike
> those too), so I don't understand this comment. And you read and replied
> pretty quickly to my message using a mailing list, so lists can't be
> unusable. :)


Thought it was pretty clear - there are three main forms of group
based communication - newsgroups, which I like, web based forums,
which I dislike and mail list based broups, which I find I don't
participate in as much.

>
> I don't personally see much of a difference between a mailing list and a
> newsgroup (mailing lists have subscription and less spam?), but you can
> read mailing lists via news if you prefer at http://gmane.org/.

On some levels, they are very similar, but they have some subtle
differences. I can put in extra effort to configure things to reduce
those differences - for example, subscribe to the lists using a web
based address, such as gmail, allowing me to access the newsgroup form
wherever I am connected, setting up mail filters so that the list
messages get put into a specific mailbox and I don't keep getting
alerted to new mail I'm not interested in, setup expiration processes
to get rid of old messages if I've not read them after they have
reached a certain age etc and I will have something approaching what I
now have with newsgroups.

Of course, this also ignores the fact that many mail lists are not
setup correctly. Recipient addresses are not always hidden (as they
are when I post to newsgroups BTW) and I would challenge your point
regarding spam. I use to maintain a separate mail address just for use
on mail lists and I found that without exception, that address would
always receive much more spam than my 'real' address that was never on
any mail lists. Mail lists have been a major source for mail address
harvesting for a long time and unlike newsgroups, I have to provide a
real mail address to subscribe.

The gmane option is a partial solution, but I find its interface much
much slower than my normal newsgorup feed which does not have gmane.

>
> I was only saying "deprecate" the newsgroup. As it stands, I basically
> have to read both gnu.emacs.help and help-gnu-emacs to be certain of
> seeing every message. I'd prefer to increase the odds of seeing
> everything in one place, and one obvious way to do that is to encourage
> people to only use one place.
>

and I was only saying that while I see this as inevitable, it is disappointing.

Tim


-- 
Tim Cross
Phone: 0428 212 217