On Sunday 19 August 2007 09:42pm, Wade Preston Shearer wrote: > All, > > I am toying with the idea of dropping Mailman for Google Groups and > would like some feedback from the group.
I wouldn't do it. A couple of other lists I've been on have switched back away from Google Groups because of the troubles they caused. Yes, they handle things fairly nicely, but you lose a lot of control over things like headers (there wasn't anything a sorting rule could really be built on and sorting by subject isn't a good idea, but please folks, don't flame me on that statement, however, ask if you don't understand me on it). Mailman is much better. You could try out Sympa, if you want to deal with installing it. Unless your server's distribution provides Sympa packages (and does well at maintaining them) it can be a little hairy. But it isn't too bad. > Mailman is a nice, old > friend that has giving years of dedicated service to the community, > but his age is showing. Sure, once you get it configured and locked > down, it will run like a champ for years on end, but installing and > configuring Mailman is a royal pain and even adding/editing lists, > administering services, and managing personal accounts is a pain. The > interface is archaic and horrible from a usability standpoint. > Mailman's features are excellent, but they aren't any good if you > can't figure out how to use them or it is so complicated that you > don't want to bother. Plus the archives aren't searchable. Plus the > archives display your email address un-obsficated. I thought I've seen lots of mailman archives that are searchable (I think that includes mine). However, I would say they aren't easily searchable as you can only search through one month at a time. One could always use Google to search them via adding "site:blah.uphpu.org" in the search box (replace 'blah' with whatever is needed to get to the archives part of things. > While I have considered alternate solutions off an on in the past, > the upcoming project of rebuilding the server has be considering it > very seriously now. Another motivation is the desire for a more > robust and flexible solution that better meets the needs of all > users. I have longed for some time for a solution that married a > forum and a mailing list into one, I can understand that desire, but I HATE forums. Yes, they are a 'web equivalent to a list, sorta' but I don't know that it makes sense to do this. We could more easily have a mailing list with a web interface to allow people to submit a message to the list, but then you have opened up another attack vector for spammers. Yes, I know you can use captchas and so forth, but why? Just a mailing list is easier to control. > so that the forum people would be > happy and the email people would be happy… with posts coming from > both email and web-based interface and being one and the same… > perfectly synchronized and users only interacting through the medium > they desire and receiving notifications in the manner they desire. Again, I understand the desire to be all things to all people, but I don't think this is a good idea. It could be, but it would be far worse than just trying to keep mailman in line, alone :) . > Well, there is a solution that does just this: Google Groups. And, > it's free. And it has a very slick, user-friendly interface. And it's > archives are searchable. And it obsficates (the word is 'obfuscate', is your spel-chucker not catching dat 1?) > your email address. You > can even receive the post via RSS if you are so inclined. I am still > checking to see if I can import our old archives, but assuming that > that and everyone having to have a Good Account are the only > downsides, what does everyone think? I think that I'm ready to make > the switch. We would still post to [email protected], the mail would > just be delivered from [EMAIL PROTECTED] instead. It does > digest mode and everything. > > What do you think? You can't control or even get headers out of it. I know one of the other lists that I'm on just switched back to Mailman (or Sympa, I don't know which, yet) from Google Groups primarily because of all the complaints about headers and sorting. There were other issues that they had encountered and Google wasn't interrested in fixing or helping with. -- Lamont Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Founder [ http://blog.OpenBrainstem.net/peregrine/ ] GPG Key fingerprint: 0E35 93C5 4249 49F0 EC7B 4DDD BE46 4732 6460 CCB5 ___ ____ _ _ / _ \ _ __ ___ _ __ | __ ) _ __ __ _(_)_ __ ___| |_ ___ _ __ ___ | | | | '_ \ / _ \ '_ \| _ \| '__/ _` | | '_ \/ __| __/ _ \ '_ ` _ \ | |_| | |_) | __/ | | | |_) | | | (_| | | | | \__ \ || __/ | | | | | \___/| .__/ \___|_| |_|____/|_| \__,_|_|_| |_|___/\__\___|_| |_| |_| |_| Intelligent Open Source Software Engineering [ http://www.OpenBrainstem.net/ ]
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