I was thinking of something similar to what Matt has suggested.
How about a fully featured website with php and a dbase of your choice to
incorporate the following aspects :
1: User Registration to the website so that SLUG'gers can login to the
website to get a members view. Reg to include a reply based confirmation to
validate the email address supplied to help with point 3.
2: Once logged in members can see the current discussion list, much like
looking at a mailbox index list including sender, subject, date sent etc.
They can then click on a link to view the actual message and choose to
reply if they wish. There could also be reply's to the thread listed below
each message to view other reply's for simplicity's sake (instead of having
to go back to the index and find the reply's.
3: Full Web page / Email synchronisation.. ie if someone posts a message to
the webpage, it get's sent out to the distro list email addy as well, and
vice versa. Users choose if they wish to receive emails or not (instead,
viewing the discussion via the webpage)
4: Admin ppl who review messages and deem the message worthy of "Best of
slug" just click on a checkbox next to the message and update it. Then the
variable in the dbase is flagged "worthy= true" or whatever. This then
leads to 5:
5: Users have the option to view "best of" only, in which case they get a
similar looking list of discussions but only see those which have been
entered as worthy...
My reasoning as to why this sort of site would be good is as follows..
Firstly, SPAM... I don't think you would too much spam from the website
version of the discussion group. Most spam is sent from fake email
addresses. The reply verification would make sure that any email address
that did start spamming could be black listed. The email address for the
distro list could be changed to one that is not on every spamming email
list around the world (an assumption from Anthony's comment about how we'd
be suprised to see the amount of spam that doesn't get through) and you
only get the email address to send emails to once you have verified your
registration. It would stop most problems of email grabber programs that
scour webpages getting email addresses for spam lists. Um, that about raps
up the spam reasoning..
Also, Bandwidth should, in theory, be reduced if people were to use this
system as instead of having to send every email out to every person whether
they are going to read it or not, people would only read the emails they
want to read and hence alot of Mbytes would be saved and hence the cost of
running the servers net connection should be reduced (assuming u guys pay
by the mbyte) although there would be a shift of the bandwidth usage away
from email towards web traffic of course.
With the wealth of programming talent on this list I'm sure that a site
with the above features could be implimented without too much drama.
*Dons asbestos suit to protect from "It has to stay an email list" flames
that may arise from this suggestion* Pls remember, Jeff asked for ideas, I
had the above idea.. Doesn't mean it'd happen (bureaucratic annoyance
comment noted from message below)
Um, that's about all I can think of atm..
Paul
At 12:27 PM 29/05/00 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
>We're working on the dynamic site and server at the moment, but there a few
>bureaucratic annoyances in the way of getting it going.
-----------------------------------------------
Paul Robinson
Senior Web Developer
Centre for Flexible Learning
Macquarie University
NSW 2109, Australia
Voice: +61 2 9850 8424
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------------
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