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Re: Proposal: An alternative to mailing lists which isn't a forum



Steve Litt wrote:
On Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:11:16 +0300
softwatt <softwatt@gmx.com> wrote:

There's a sub-question here: How does this proposal compare to Usenet?
For me, Usenet forums quickly become the stuff I forgot I ever had. Out
of sight, out of mind. I don't think I'm alone, either, because a lot
of forums have nothing for weeks at a time.

However, both Usenet and this proposal are superior to mailing lists
in all aspects. Feel free to correct me here. Do mailing lists have
any advantages in comparison to Usenet/this proposal?
I'll simply reply about mailing lists vs Usenet, without regard to
your proposal, which I might not completely understand...

I'm on at least 25 mailing lists. If I had to go out to 25 different
places to get my information, I'd never get anything done. With mailing
lists, posts come to me: I don't need to go searching hither and yon
for them.

To me, that's why mailing lists are hugely superior to forums. That's
also why most free software projects have mailing lists, not forums.


I'll echo that. I also support a couple of dozen email lists on our servers - the question of forums comes up at least once a year on each one -- and dies for exactly the reason Steve mentions.

Though... it's worth pointing out that many email clients also allow for treating both newsgroups and RSS feeds as if they were mail folders - with all the visual indication that new messages have arrived. Then again, I have inboxes for 4 different accounts, auto-filter most of my list traffic into a single "lists" folder, and about a dozen RSS feeds. I always open the inboxes and list folder (then sort by subject); I generally ignore the RSS feeds - even though they all "come to me."



--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra


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