On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 4:26 AM, Rich Kulawiec <r...@gsp.org> wrote: > On Thu, Feb 02, 2017 at 07:30:15PM -0500, Jos? Mar?a Mateos wrote: > > I think what you are describing is better accomplished by software like > > Discourse (https://www.discourse.org/), which is the discussion engine > > behind popular sites such as BoingBoing.net. This, however, presents the > > danger of making the mailing list redundant (I prefer the mailing list > > format, but that is just a matter of preference; I understand other > people > > prefer web-based systems). > > It's not just a matter of preference: mailing lists (and Usenet) are > inherently and markedly superior to web-based systems. It's not even > close. It's a serious strategic blunder to downgrade to the latter. > > Let me give you just *some* of the reasons why: > > 1. They're asynchronous: you don't have to interact in real time. > You can download messages when connected to the 'net, then read > them and compose responses when offline. (This has special > revelance to this group.) > > Also remember: not everyone is as fortunate and wealthy as you > are. There are people using the Internet who have connections > that run at dialup speeds, and/or are only available sporadically, > and/or are heavily censored at the behest of their governments. > Novices ignore this reality. Experienced people architect for it. > > 2. They work reasonably well even in the presence of multiple outages > and severe congestion. > > 3. They're push, not pull, so new content just shows up. Web forums > require that you go fishing for it. > > 4. They scale beautifully. > > 5. They allow you to use *your* software with the user interface of *your* > choosing rather than being compelled to learn 687 different > web forums with 687 different user interfaces, all of which > range from "merely bad" to "hideously bad". > > 6. You can archive them locally... > > 7. ...which means you can search them locally with the software of *your* > choice. Including when you're offline. And provided you make > backups, you'll always have an archive -- even if the original > goes away. > > I've seen WAY too many web-based discussions vanish forever > because a host crashed or a domain expired or a company went > under or a company was acquired or someone made a mistake or > there was a security breach or a government confiscated it. > > 8. They're portable: lists can be rehosted relatively easily. > > 9. (When properly run) they're relatively free of abuse vectors. > > 10. They're low-bandwidth, which is especially important at a point in > time when many people are interacting via metered services that > charge by the byte and are WAY overpriced, and getting more > overpriced every day. This will get worse, not better, > with telecom industry consolidation and deregulation. > > 11. They impose minimal security risk. > > 12. They impose minimal privacy risk. > > 13. They can be freely interconverted -- that is, you can move a list > hosted by A using software B on operating system C to > host X using software Y on operating system Z. > > 14. They're archivable in a format that is likely to be readable long > into the future. (I have archives of lists from the early 1980's. > Still readable with contemporary software because they're in > mbox format. I see no sign that this will cease to be true.) > > 15. They can be written to media and read from it. This is a very > non-trivial task with web forums: just try doing the equivalent > of #13 above. Good luck with that. > > Also highly relevant for this list: it's not a hard technical > problem to sneakernet a mailing list or a newsgroup across a > border on a USB stick or a memory card or a CD/DVD. > > 16. They handle threading well. And provided users take a few seconds > to edit properly, they handle quoting well. > > 17. Numerous tools exist for handling mbox format: for example, "grepmail" > is a highly useful basic search tool. Most search engines > include parsers for email, and the task of ingesting mail > archives into search engines is very well understood. > Excellent archiving tools exist as well. > > 18. The computing resources require to support them are minimal -- > CPU, memory, disk, bandwidth, etc. I set up an instance > of Mailman for someone that's working perfectly fine on a > 10-year-old laptop. > > 19. Mailing lists interoperate. I can easily forward a message > from this list to another one. Or to a person. I can > send a message to multiple lists. I can forward a message > from a person to this list. And so on. Try doing this > with web forum software A on host B with destinations > web forum software X and Y on hosts X1 and Y1. Good > luck with that. > > 20. Mailing lists can be uni- or bidirectionally gatewayed to > Usenet. (The main Python mailing list is an example > of this.) This can be highly useful, and is something > that everyone on *this* list should study/understand -- > because it makes them very difficult to censor. > > There's more, but I think this easily suffices to make a slamdunk case. > Like I said, it's not even close. > > Frank Zappa once said that you can't be a real country unless you have > a beer and an airline. I don't think you can take an organization or > a project seriously unless it has a mailing list and/or a newsgroup. > > Of course there are always people who rush to the latest greatest > thing (e.g., Slack appears to be popular right now) because it's new > and shiny, but those come and go, and they depend on the vagaries of > the companies behind them. Many painful object lessons in the > impermanence of such things may be found at http://archiveteam.org > -- whose contributors have invested heavily in attempts to mitigate > the consequences of very poor decision-making by others. [1] > > Not to mention that many of those latest greatest shiny new things come > equipped with hideous privacy and security issues that can't be fixed > because they're fundamental parts of the design. Some of these > are so obvious that I can only conclude they're intentional. > > ---rsk > > [1] One metric -- of many -- for assessing such operations is to ask > this question: can you export ALL of your data and ALL of your metadata > from them, at will, and in a portable, open, usable format? The answer > is almost always no. Even allegedly open operations like Google Groups > fail this test. And if you can't do that, then you should instantly > and permanently rule out using it.
Thank you. A very well argued case for keeping what we have.
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