"Mike Parker" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > Walter Bright wrote: >> Yigal Chripun wrote: >>>> I've thought about building such a system for these forums many times. >>>> Registration would not be required to post, but registering would >>>> enable >>>> features like voting on posts, establishing a profile, preferences, >>>> etc. >>> >>> That sounds awesome. Another useful feature would be storing session >>> info in the profile such that if I read a post at work the post will be >>> marked as such when I use a different computer/news-reader like my home >>> PC. >> >> Yup. What I hate about reddit/slashdot/ycombinator is there's no way to >> mark ones I've read as read. On a long thread, it's really hard to see if >> there's anything new. >> >> >>> wouldn't it be easier to just use web forums (there are many existing >>> system with all the bells and whistles) and write a news-gateway for it >>> than to implement all the features for the current news-server? it'll >>> also fix the currently broken web interface for the NG. >> >> They all suck. Sorry. >> >> Most use far too much vertical space, spreading the thread out over >> multiple pages, or don't indent a threaded view. And *none* of them have >> the ability to mark what you've read. > > Most of the web forums I use can be configured per user to determine how > many threads to show on one page, or how many posts to show in the thread > per page. All of the popular forums these days have features to mark posts > as read, mark all read, show posts since last visit, and so on. My > particular favorite is SMF[1]. > > FWIW, this is the only set of newsgroups I read. In fact, I thought I had > unsubscribed from my last newsgroup in the late 90s, and was a bit miffed > to see that D didn't have a mailing list when I first stumbled across it. > All of the other development communities I'm interested in offer mailing > lists or web forums. I particularly like mailing lists, since I use GMail. > It makes a world of difference. Searching through these newsgroups can be > aggravating. If we could get on Google Groups I'd have less to gripe > about. > > IMO, newsgroups should just die. But I seem to be in the minority here.
About 95% of the time I come across something where the only community option is a mailing list, I just flat-out refuse to bother. The few times I've caved were when I really, truly *needed* to. I have no problem with newsgroups or web forums, they both have their pros and cons IMO. But I absolutely can't tolerate mailing lists, they're so absolutely horrid.
