Suggestion: Replace List by Newsgroup
Bill Davidsen
davidsen at tmr.com
Sat Feb 12 21:35:28 UTC 2011
Tim wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-02-11 at 22:11 +0100, Outway wrote:
>> I don't see in what way a mailing list is superior to a newsgroup. But I
>> do see several advantages of a newsgroup:
>>
>> * Clear thread structure (collapsable trees in standard news readers)
>
> Well, actually, that's also possible with decent mail clients. Crappy
> ones can't, and postings from crappy ones disrupt the threading for
> everyone else (for news and email).
>
> You didn't mention bandwidth saving: You download a list of headers, of
> what's become available since your last look, but you only download the
> actual body of message when you go to read it. i.e. If there's 2,000
> messages one day, and you only want to read 2 of them, they're the only
> ones you'd fetch.
>
"that's also possible with decent mail clients," such as Seamonkey. I assume
also with Tbird, but I haven't used that since SM got RSS support and I can
track dozens of list with low interest to content ratios. Set to download
headers only.
> Nor: Never receive spam in your personal mail, since you don't have to
> expose your email address when posting to a news server. Some servers
> will accept no address, others insist on one (but you can use a
> blackhole address that you don't check for mail).
>
There is so much spam in email that this is a dubious claim. If you actually use
your mail, someone will leak it (by not using BCC on a mail) and you will get spam.
>> A newsgroup is no more complicated to set up from a reader point of view
>> than mailing list access. No exotic software is needed, the newsgroup
>> can also be web interfaced.
>
An Seamonkey supports "watched threads" for news, so you can use the "show
watched threads with new posts" mode if you are checking mail in limited time or
bandwidth.
> In the past it could be a bit of a pain, if you found that you needed to
> go to more than one news server for all of your groups. But more
> clients are around that handle multiple news servers, and quite well.
>
> In general, I have preferred news to mailing lists, though it's been a
> long while since I bothered.
>
I actually ran my own server for a long time, and a mail to news gateway. I was
running news servers for a living then, so it wasn't much effort.
--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot
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