Mailing lists
-
I couldn't find a relevant thread via searching, so here's one I just invented. Feel free to merge into an existing thread if deemed necessary.
I'm one of those people who hates email. Several times now, I've wanted to contribute to an open source project, or ask a quick question, or let them know what I had to fix in their broken codebase to get it to compile under MinGW or MSVC. With projects that use GitHub or have a forum, this is trivial. But with mailing lists, it's an instant turn-off.
Mailing lists are even more annoying when you only want to post to a list once. In this case, if one wants to receive replies to his or her post, one must remain subscribed to the list. This means receiving piles of mail one does not care about, just in case someone else replies to one’s post. This is as opposed to a Web forum, where one can register, post once and check a box to request reply notifications, then receive a notification via e-mail if and when someone replies. Consider what happens if no one replies to one’s post until a year or more later. With a Web forum, it does not matter even if I forget that I ever registered and posted, because the forum will e-mail me when someone replies. By contrast, with a mailing list, I am unlikely to forget because I will continue to receive piles of mail from the list that I do not care about and consequently do not read. If one eventually gets tired of receiving all this noise and unsubscribes from the list or tells the list to stop sending list posts, one is never notified when someone else finally does reply to one’s post.
http://rickardandersson.com/i-hate-mailing-listsA forum subscribes to me. I subscribe to a mailing list. It's backwards.
Then there's the people who defend mailing lists. Pretty much every argument on that page is nonsensical to me, to the point that I don't believe some of these people have even created any account other than their email account and Stack Overflow account. The arguments against forums are that there needs to be a certain minimum amount of activity for it to work out...but that doesn't make sense because you can receive email notifications about everything that happens in a forum and then it's exactly like a mailing list except easier to use...
Clearly, this is a generational gap. But this forum has people from multiple generations (I assume) and I want to hear your opinions. Why do you hate or not hate mailing lists?
/small><ins<discourse<strong<text<meme<here
-
What is a mailing list?
-
-
What you need is a forum with a decent email interface so you can use it just like a mailing list if you want to.* Problem solved.
(*) Mailing lists still have two advantages:
- It's easy to create a personal archive of your discussions.
- It's easy to start a private conversation in the middle of a thread. Most forums still suck at that.
-
- It's easy to start a private conversation in the middle of a thread. Most forums still suck at that.
whisper whisper
-
I was forced to set one up recently because one of the key players had access to email at work, but not arbitrary forums or facebook. Google Groups seems okay, I always use the forum interface, but we're very low traffic, to the point where all we really need is a quick way to cc everyone and a history to look things up in. I could probably have made do with just gmail.
So that's my lukewarm, half-hearted defense. Sorry, best I could muster.
-
What you need is a forum with a decent email interface so you can use it just like a mailing list if you want to.* Problem solved.
You mean usenet?
-
It's easy to start a private conversation in the middle of a thread. Most forums still suck at that.
christ! if only most forums had the function for private messages .Clearly, this is a generational gap. But this forum has people from multiple generations (I assume) and I want to hear your opinions. Why do you hate or not hate mailing lists?
Mailing lists actually broke me and any love I could have the OSS community. Go to mailing list. No I'll rather leave the bug with repro steps unreported.
-
Mailing lists have their place (as noted by @Yamikuronue) but for anything large they're useless, as stated by @LB_.
-
RE: Mailing Lists
Please remove me from your mailing list
-
Discourse edition:
-
Discourse edition:
..... DISAPPOINT!
/me was expecting "Please remove me too!" as a response!
-
?
now that I think about it, discourse is a glorified mailing list with its heavy reliance on email
-
This post is deleted!
-
?
now that I think about it, discourse is a glorified mailing list with its heavy reliance on email
Well played!
-
They don't fit in today's model of the internet, at all. I expect to be able to do things through a web interface. Email is for sending messages to people and registering on websites.
Plus, 99% of them use GNU mailman which has a web interface that doesn't even attempt to explain things to random visitors, since the kind of people that use that stuff still live in the 90s themselves and don't believe in "making things easier to people". I'm surprised they don't try to make you send the messages through UUCP.
-
the kind of people that use that stuff still live in the 90s themselves and don't believe in "making things easier to people".
Linux users then?
-
Hey, I resent that! I never needed more than twm with an xterm running, anyways! I use fucking Lynx to browse and I like it just fine.
-
Does this bug anyone else? The arrow next to "Tracking" points down, but the menu always opens up above the button. If the button is at the top of the browser window, I can't see the menu at all. On Android I see the opposite, the menu always opens down.
-
That's probably going to be a
YOURE_ON_MOBILE,THATS_DIFFERENT. Opera matches your experience in FF on desktop.
-
Does this bug anyone else?
The menu opening up vs. down doesn't bother me; I haven't used it enough times to have noticed, or at least I don't remember noticing. What does bother me, though, is that the statement is a barefaced lie. Muted topics don't have a new/unread posts indicator, but they do appear on your unread (or at least latest; I rarely use unread) list.
-
Wow, this is really fucking broken:
-
Yes. Also that jellypotatoed me up to post #3.
-
What kind of monster are you! Using duck duck go. That's for communists and space spiders.
-
I like that avatar position. Reminds me of:
Which is always the correct sentiment when using Discourse.
Filed under: FEATURE REQUEST: slant all avatars in site CSS
-
I like that avatar position.
setInterval(function() { $('img.avatar:not(.fa-spin), img.logo-small:not(.fa-spin)').addClass('fa-spin') }, 200);
-
Filed under: FEATURE REQUEST: slant all avatars in site CSS
Feature request: for every achievement let user rotate their avatar by 1 degree CW; the more one spends time here, the more twisted one becomes. Addendum: after every 360 degrees, just start adding blakey marks at random spots of the screen.
Why do you hate or not hate mailing lists?
It is good for developers of one software, or newbs who want to learn random things and have random questions. If I want to just check on them, I use GMail to filter them to their own label and delete them immediately. Also ML can come with an option to mute unless you are directly a recipient.
-
Yes, I figured it was the spin, it was just caught in a... suggestive position.
-
Can we all just telnet to the server, where there's a single shared session going on, and we all type into a vi window in real time?
LK: can anyone help with css position? *STOP* CssGuru: css 2 or css 3? *STOP*
-
I recommend an IRC server for that usecase. Or XMPP.
-
-
@Lorne_Kates said:
@PleegWat said:
I recommend an IRC server for that usecase. Or XMPP.
TOO ADVANCED!
Yeah, think of all the information and colours you get on IRC. USERS DON'T LIKE COLOURS AND INFORMATION
-
IMO mailing lists are kinda useful for smaller semi-private or private groups. Stuff with rather infrequent messages (and only the occasional spike in postings).
But, I also prefer a mailing list over a forum with no notifications (*cough*shitty "learning" platforms*cough*). I want to be notified when something happens, and not have to check a dozen different places for the occasional update.
-
Yeah, think of all the information and colours you get on IRC. USERS DON'T LIKE COLOURS AND INFORMATION
IRC also has asynchronous communication, which is a
to a proper conversation. One person speaks at a time, and then the next person speaks. A single input with established start/stop codewords and glyphs are sufficient to maintain a single-duplex conversation. No one will talk over anyone else or reply out of turn. THIS IS HOW TO HAVE DISCUSSIONS!Also: Does anyone else IRC for anything except cybersex?
Filed under: asl?
-
A forum subscribes to me. I subscribe to a mailing list. It's backwards.
I find web forums to be reinvented wheels — specifically reinvented Usenet and mailing lists. But I guess I’m showing my age.
-
@Lorne_Kates said:
Does anyone else IRC for anything except cybersex?
Years ago you could use it for pirated media, but Bittorrent and other more convenient methods have superseded it.
-
@Lorne_Kates said:
Also: Does anyone else IRC for anything except cybersex?
Yes, one time about two weeks ago I tried using IRC to ask a question in #centos since there was no documentation about the topic and I thought I was missing something. I was informed that I was
- Rude (oh, I'm the rude one...)
- Could not accept "no" for an answer (I was asking for further clarification on details)
- Not allowed to ask for legal advice (right, that's what I was trying to do...)
- That I should consult with a lawyer (
what kind of project requires you to retain a lawyer to read technical documentation??!)
Etc. The dickweedery was so strong (and eventually just devolved into circlejerking about how anyone could possibly have a question about something that was completely undocumented) that I simply left and decided not to use CentOS.
TL;DR: no, not really.
-
@Lorne_Kates said:
Also: Does anyone else IRC for anything except cybersex?
I once used it to find tenacle porn.
-
NICK Powerlord
JOIN #thedailywtf
PRIVMSG #thedailywtf :Hi!I have no idea if that syntax is correct, it's been over a decade since I last dealt with raw IRC commands.
-
I find web forums to be reinvented wheels — specifically reinvented Usenet and mailing lists. But I guess I’m showing my age.
Just wait 10 years until Discourse has reinvented the Internet and you'll have forgotten about anything else. Or something.
Filed under:
-
Sounds like whoever you were talking to did consider it a legal issue.
-
I was asking if they had any documentation about the licenses of packages included in the CentOS DVD, or if they had some sort of documented requirements for licenses for any packages that would be included. I was asking for links to a page or page(s) with that sort of information. I'm also fairly certain IRC is not legally binding, but whatever. They were real dicks about it.
-
Sounds like support staff drilled with "anything license related should be directed to legal", under which assumption the other allegations make sense.
-
Support staff? This is OSS. It's a community of
volunteerspeople on a power trip.
-
Just wait 10 years until Discourse has reinvented the Internet
Discourse: Reinventing the Web (because we can't figure out how to make it work the way it was intended).
-
-
I remember a thread I had way back where I asked someone why they hated formatting emails with HTML, and they replied that it broke their 1970s-era mailing list software somehow.
So there's another point: mailing lists are always full of luddites running software from the Carter administration.
-
Mailing lists are great for 1:n communication, like new version announcements or short-term schedule changes.
They suck in each and every single other aspect.
- no notification by thread, so you get spammed with Every. Single. Question. And. Every. Single. Answer.
- no usable way to search the archive for existing answers to your question, so even the small percentage of newbies willing to search first will give up and just ask the same question for the 1023rd time. And even if they still get useful answers, everybody else will also get them. For the 1023rd time. See above.
- sending email address almost always has to be identical to signup address, so no me+stupidlist@domain.com for you
- even if it doesn't, un-subscribing email has to be identical to signup address. I have six or seven filters in my inbound MX just for mailing lists that made it stupidly hard to unsubscribe from.
- people still simply can not quote correctly, making every single answer a pain to read. And impossible to find, see re:searching above.
