[gopher] Re: This mailing list

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

Jeroen Schot wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> If you want to migrate to Google Groups, I think we would be better of with
> comp.infosystems.gopher. All the advantages of a Google Group and accessible
> through usenet. The only problem would be moving the current archives to it.

I considered it, but there are a lot of problems with that route.  It
gives us no control whatsoever, meaning:

 * We have no control over who posts, subscribes, or participates

 * There is no way to moderate or ban troublemakers

 * There is no way to subscribe and get full emails of every post like
there is with a regular Google Group (digest or "summaries" only)

 * There is no way to control what goes on the group's home page

 * There is no way to obtain a subsriber list if we want to migrate
elsewhere

 * There is no way to load our existing subscriber list into the group

 * I am not certain whether you can post via email to a Usenet Google
Group; if you can, it certainly wasn't very obvious.

This group is actually available via a bidirectional NNTP gateway from
Gmane; see http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.network.gopher.general for
details.  This arrangement has been in place for some years and I would
expect it to continue.

I'm not sure it would buy is much anyway; Usenet is waning in popularity
as a discussion forum and many ISPs don't carry it anymore anyhow.

FWIW, there's no way to load old archives into any Google Group, Usenet
or otherwise.  I expect to put a pointer to the Gmane archives on the
Google Group or Mailman page, whichever route we go.

-- John