On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 11:39:51AM +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
"Joe Smith" <unknown_kev_cat@hotmail.com> writes:
> So I really wonder why mailing lists are so common.
It sort of depends on what you're looking for.
Some advantages of mailing lists:
* E-mail generally has a "wider reach" -- it gets past corporate
firewalls, (my company has never allowed external nntp connections),
works even on strange systems, etc.
Point. Then again, if your corporate sysadmins don't want you reading
news, they probably don't want you reading mailinglists, either.
* With email, you can use the same MUA you always use, with the
features you're used to. People are _used_ to email, know how to
configure it.
OTOH, many MUA's (including Thunderbird, mutt with some patches, pine,
Mozilla Mail, MS Outlook Express, and of course gnus (which is more of a
news client than a mail client)) can read news just fine[1], with an
interface that is almost the same as the mail interface. Outlook
Express, which does not support threading in the mail interface, will
suddenly support threading for NNTP, too.