On Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 08:33:08AM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote: > On Sun, Aug 08, 2021 at 03:26:25PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote: > >To be honest I don't think that mailing lists are a very good venue > >for user support and I would these days prefer to direct people to a > >Stack Overflow-like site. > > I agree with you to some extent. I've wondered for a long while whether > Mailman 3 and it's "HyperKitty" web front-end could be a solution. If it bears any similarity to classic mailman, then colour me unimpressed. My pet peeve with that one is that it cuts lists into month sized slices (which makes kind of sense when you want a month view, but puts you in an awkward place when you're reading a thread which crosses one (or several!) month boundaries). Don't get me wrong. Searchable archives "out there" are invaluable, and whoever tries to unify mailing lists and fora is in my eyes a hero -- but I fear the core problem is not a technical one. Imagine just that "+1" thingie: how do those who participate via mail get to "see" that? Doesn't that lead to both groups's "views of the world" slowly diverging? I think this happens at a very fundamental level: in the "mail world": "protocol" [1] is separate from user agent. The ones are using mutt, the others thunderbird or claws, a third one (horrors!) some kind of web mail and a fourth one (even more horrors!) outlook. This is known, so most of us know that the MUA's visual appearance is not part of the message. As opposed to a web application, where one visual appearance is forced onto^H^H^H [2] offered to all participants; the separation is not so clear. Bridging both worlds takes more than a couple of smart algorithms. All I have seen up to now is done as web design is done these days: you start with a wireframe [3], then... The result for me is "thanks, but no, thanks". Cheers [1] in a very general sense: alternatively: "data model" [2] here you see my bias. I can't hide it. [3] i.e. the starting point of the design is a visual one. - t
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