Re: New debian-devel archive
On Tue, Jun 19, 2001 at 12:23:20AM +0300, Sami Haahtinen wrote:
> this looks really nice.. after adding the debian layout to this
The frontend is all php4 so the html output can be changed relatively easily
and it uses a style-sheet for the background and stuff; I imagine you
probably don't want our logo and colours. :-)
> it could replace the current lists.debian.org interface.
We would be thrilled to have such an honour! :-)
> only thing that i miss while looking at the pages are threads.. i love
> threads, but i can't find threads in this software.
> <sound like=5yrold>I want my threads! i want my threads</sound>
Yes, we did have threads, but we later changed out minds for a few reasons:
First, a threaded view breaks chronological order of messages. Usually the
order messages arrived in is more important than who replied to who. This is
b/c the poster usually reads all the preceding messages in the conversation
and is really replying to all of them even though he only picks one to reply
to.
Hence, 'conversations' were borne. With this scheme you see all the messages
in a particular top-level thread, such as: "New debian-devel archive".
Another reason is that it's simpler for the masses than a tree - which
non-programmer types really don't get. (We're trying to make it idiot proof
so we can reclaim all those new users out there who are switching to HTML
based message forums)
Yet another is that after using the conversation style view for about two
weeks, when we looked at other lists with reply-trees we found we didn't like
them anymore. :-) We're hoping the same holds true for other people.
(The really killer thing about conversations is the '+' link on the left -
this allows you to expand all the messages in that thread and read it in
sequence)
And finally, one of the features added to Mailman (this needs our client-app
- idmanager) allows you to opt-in/opt-out of a thread based on it's topic
message. So you can sign up to receive all mail from a topic by default,
then when you see a flame email, you opt-out of that thread so you don't
get the rest of it. Or, you only receive the first message of every thread
and you opt-in to receive the rest of it. This view of messaging only really
works from a conversation style view.
So, to sum up, we picked our 'conversation' view for a reason or two.
All that said though, you're nearly our first user so if you still want that
feature in a month, we'd be happy to re-add it. :-) It'll probably work just
like conversations but with a tree like layout in the rows.
PS. You might want to have a look over the Forum setup instructions at
http://www.javien.org/install.html which explains how the whole archive
package fits together.
Also, an example of Forum integrated with Mailman (which is I assume what
you'd want) is at: http://www.javien.org/forum/index.php. The difference is
the added 'info' link which pops open the Mailman pages. If the list isn't
hosted by the archive machine the 'info' link isn't there; as on
http://forum.javien.com/
I hope this answers your questions!
--
Wesley W. Terpstra - Linux Developer
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