Sorry for top-posting, but my comments are in general response to your email.
First, I certainly appreciate your reasoned and polite response along with your attempts to minimize problems caused by the forum->email gateway. My main gripe though is more with the non-level playing field created by a forum->email gateway. The fact that once in a while one sees an annoying and/or out-of-context post is more a symptom of this bigger issue. Specifically, the advantage of an email list is that it forces *everyone* to participate making it harder for the majority to freeload by just popping in with an occasional question while leaving it to a small dedicated few to browse the forum regularly and answer all the questions. In other words, the "price" of being able to ask a question is that you have to also listen to (and hopefully over time also answer) other people's questions. Had this been simply a forum, I too would probably have been the type of user who just stumbles by when I have a question and then moves on once I have it all working. Instead, over time, as I have become more experienced, I have not only continued to learn but also started to give back when I know an answer. To be honest, I used to not understand this "subtlety" and wondered why I had to join the email list just in order to post my single question when I had no interest in seeing other people's questions -- but that's because I was missing the whole point. To get you need to give too. Thus, I think a forum->email gateway creates a class of (potentially) *lazy* users who just see this as a place to ask questions rather than give back to the community. Instead, I would suggest a compromise. Use the forum->email gateway to allow people to *read* threads. But require email listserv membership in order to post. Of course, people could subscribe to post a question and then unsubscribe but hopefully that will be rare. I mean when I first subscribed to ask a question, I never would have guessed that I would still be active on the list 8 months later... In summary, to me this is an issue not just of occasional nuisance but simple fairness. cpreston wrote at about 15:22:35 -0400 on Tuesday, May 26, 2009: > > I set up the BackupCentral forum <-> BackupPC mailing list gateway about two > years ago, at the same time I did this for several other open-source > products. Although not everyone on every list likes the idea, the general > consensus on most of the lists has been that it is a Good Thing. Sure there > are a few people that don't like it, but the vast majority realize that some > people would rather use forums instead of email, and welcome their input to > the community. Since this particular list happens to have a very vocal > minority expressing dis-satisfaction with the link, let me explain a few > things in hopes of improving relations. If we can't do that, I'll sever the > link and we'll part ways. > > BackupPC is an open-source project, and such projects generally welcome any > and all comers to their community, as more people generally means more help, > etc. If you don't know, BackupPC is visited by over 60,000 unique people > every month and has well over a million page views per month, and I send a > lot of traffic to http://backuppc.sourceforge.net every single day. One of > the reasons for this is that the most frequently searched for phrase that > takes people to BackupCentral is "free backup software." > > No, the gateway software (mail2forum.com) isn't perfect, but it is the best > I've found out there. My biggest complaint is that it doesn't know how to > put an "Re:" in front of a subject line so that it will thread properly in > Outlook or similar client. (It actually can, but because it strips off the > [BackupPC-Users] header only to have it put back on by the list, the "Re:" > gets put after the [BackupPC-Users] string, not before it.) > > I took a look at the messages that went to the list from the forum for the > past six months. The first thing I would like to say is that the vast > majority of posts from Backup Central have been standard questions and > answers. You don't notice those, though. I looked especially close at the > ones that seemed to generate the most ire. It wasn't necessarily that they > replied to messages without quoting any of the original message, although I > encourage them not to do that. It was that the message they were replying > to was so old that it wouldn't have been in most people's email clients > anyway. In one case, a user was replying to his own post to say "Anyone?" > and the original post was almost two months old. In another case, someone > posted a "me too" post to a post that was two YEARS old! While this is > perfectly normal behavior in a forum, it is NOT normal behavior in a mailing > list. (Not that it's wrong; it just doesn't happen.) > > I have taken a lot of steps to minimize the impact of using a forum on a > mailing list. I have put special code in and a human spam filter to stop at > least that problem, and it's been 100% successful so far. I also make sure > the subject line matches the original posts, although I can't fix the "Re:" > problem. So while they don't thread perfectly, it's relatively obvious what > they're replying to if you're using a standard email client. I also wrote > some code that sends them a message about how the forums and emails are > connected and how they should respond. Finally, I have now put a "READ > BEFORE POSTING" sticky on the forum that shows up at the top. > > Some have requested a header up front. The software I'm using doesn't > support that, but it does support a footer. If you're looking for a way to > completely ignore posts from the list, then all you have to do is ignore > messages from the email address "[email protected]" as all > forum messages come from that email address. > > I would urge you instead to take the VERY SMALL MINORITY of messages that > fit into the "they replied wrong" category, and just hit the DELETE key, > without replying to them with snide comments that suggest that they are an > idiot simply for using Backup Central to interface to the list. Please > understand that if a person is asking a question via the BackupCentral > forum, they probably FOUND YOU via Backup Central. So the way some of you > (and one of you in particular) respond to their very first post seems a > rather rude way to welcome a new member of the community. In addition, I've > never understood the logic of protesting one worthless email by replying to > the list with a number of other worthless emails. Explain to me how that > helps anyone. > > In closing, I offer the following. Please reply to this email or send me a > private one to [email protected] to tell me what you think. If you > don't see what all the fuss is about, then please say so. If you'd like to > tell me to go pound sand, then say so. I say this because I think the vast > majority of you are fine with things the way they are. If I'm right, we'll > leave things the way they are. If I'm wrong, I'll sever the link and you > will lose all the people that come to your community via BackupCentral. I > again don't see how that's going to help anyone either. > > +---------------------------------------------------------------------- > |This was sent by [email protected] via Backup Central. > |Forward SPAM to [email protected]. > +---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Register Now for Creativity and Technology (CaT), June 3rd, NYC. CaT > is a gathering of tech-side developers & brand creativity professionals. Meet > the minds behind Google Creative Lab, Visual Complexity, Processing, & > iPhoneDevCamp as they present alongside digital heavyweights like Barbarian > Group, R/GA, & Big Spaceship. http://p.sf.net/sfu/creativitycat-com > _______________________________________________ > BackupPC-users mailing list > [email protected] > List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users > Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net > Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Register Now for Creativity and Technology (CaT), June 3rd, NYC. CaT is a gathering of tech-side developers & brand creativity professionals. Meet the minds behind Google Creative Lab, Visual Complexity, Processing, & iPhoneDevCamp as they present alongside digital heavyweights like Barbarian Group, R/GA, & Big Spaceship. http://p.sf.net/sfu/creativitycat-com _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list [email protected] List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
