Billy Pilgrim wrote:
> Could lists.debian.org be served with phpbb instead of email lists?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say... Hell No.
> For one, emails addresses are currently exposed for spam harvesting.
As they are on forums. Most, even and especially phpbb, expose raw mailto
tags on the bottom of every message. Granted the user can turn these off but
they are set on by defaults. Defaults that most users don't change.
> And two, phpbb is much better for archiving, searching, etc. See
> mozilla forums, OOo forums, etc, etc, etc.
Actually I find forums a hell of a lot harder to search through. I loathe
having to go through mozilla's forums and my one foray into OOos forums didn't
get me any answers, either. I regularly do searches on Puzzle Pirates' forums
and it is an absolute mess.
Setting all that aside webboards are a huge step backwards in terms of
internet communication. They are. Oh, sure, they're nice and newb friendly
with the pointy-clicky but let's face facts.
1: You can't filter a webboard. You can't. Say, for example, someone thinks
I'm a right prick. Chances are this message will provoke such a response.
They can, if they so choose, simply delete any message with my name or email
address in From: (or references, in-reply-to, etc). Webboards, ouside of one,
there's no method of filtering in that manner.
2: Webboards can only be displayed in "topics". What's funny though is that
once you get inside the topics you've got a flat listing. It is rare to see a
webboard to threading which many of us find invaluable.
3: The way new messages are handled on webboards is appalling. If you're
lukcy you might get a little mini-icon that on a random roll-over would reveal
in its URL that it points to the newest message. If you're lucky. Most times
though you have to remember what page you were on and go from there.
4: Let's not even get into the whole issue of Quoting and leave it at, "Let's
not even get into the whole issue of quoting".
In terms of effcient communication modern webboards fall well below even
the simplist of BBSes back in my 300bps days a good, what, 20 or so years ago?
Webboard authors set out to do their thing and completely ignored 20+ years
of learning that came prior to their monstrosities.
--
Steve C. Lamb | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
PGP Key: 8B6E99C5 | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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