On 12/09/2011 00:23, Gerard Beekmans wrote: > Speaking of mailing lists. I wasn't going to bring it up yet but I have > toyed with the idea for several years now of moving away from the idea > of email based mailing lists and moving to a forum based system. Before > all us old timers (myself included) have a virtual "aneurysm", just > think about it for a while and get at it from different angles. > > As an example why to even consider this: as time goes by and technology > advances, I am spending less and less time at a computer that has my > email programs installed and more time on mobile devices (phones and > tablets). Accessing emails to read mailing lists in that way is an > exercise in frustration so I've stopped trying. A web based forum would > solve that problem. Sure, I could filter email on the server and access > via a decent IMAP program and call it a day. But I don't and it's > besides the point. Not everybody has that option and needs to download > email to their computer before it can be sorted, managed and read > efficiently. > > I think in the end it just comes down to: email based lists made sense > 12 years ago when LFS started. It's how things were done back then. I > think it's valid to think about a paradigm shift and move to a more > efficient technology so we can more easily access LFS from myriad of our > computers, mobile devices, tablets and so forth.
I'm hardly an old-timer, but for written conversations, I think that an email based list suits my needs better than anything else. I've yet to see or work with a properly threaded forum. HTML markup and those animated emoticons would have to be disabled. Most forums I've seen don't allow file uploads, although whether that's a configuration option or a missing feature, I don't know. I fear we'd end up with links to various file storage providers that are not guaranteed to be around tomorrow. That said, if other folks want to explore other options that fit their needs better, I'm certainly interested to hear about them. I'd just rather they be implemented on top of the email lists rather than in place of them. Some kind of 'gateway' app that William Tracy alluded to sounds ideal, and very similar to our nntp->mailman gateway we had at one time. Regards, Matt. -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
