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Why use mailing lists?

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Re: Why use mailing lists?

#11

Post by mrweasel »

magicalhippo wrote: post #8
teddyh wrote: post #2

Like I recently wrote in response to someone here who was fascinated that mailing lists were “still a thing in 2025”: Please, inform us of an alternative which is: • Non-proprietary • Federated • Archivable • Accessible • Not dependent on a specific company — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43972038 >

Newsgroups as in NNTP[1] fits those criteria, no? Granted, federated bit is more tricky now. Back in the days many if not most ISPs ran a NNTP server. But the protocol supports it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_News_Transfer_Protocol

I loved Usenet back in the day, but I sort of wonder why organisations keep their servers running. I struggle to find any active newsgroups these days. Weirdly enough spam still hits some of the groups.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#12

Post by mrweasel »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #5
mxchris2121 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please inform me of an opensource way to run one that I can actually get configured properly.

Same for self-hosted mail...

I haven't tried it, so it might be more complicated than the documentation leads me to believe, but Mox looks promising: https://www.xmox.nl/

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#13

Post by yogorenapan »

mrweasel wrote: post #12
giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for self-hosted mail...

I haven't tried it, so it might be more complicated than the documentation leads me to believe, but Mox looks promising: https://www.xmox.nl/

I've been using it for a year now. Can vouch for the quality and reliability

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#15

Post by Symbiote »

benley wrote: post #6
mxchris2121 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please inform me of an opensource way to run one that I can actually get configured properly.

Mailman 3 is acceptable, imho. It's been a few years since I worked with it, but I was able to design a reliable public instance of it ( https://mailman.haskell.org ) with a few days of effort, including the migration from mailman v2.

Same here — I think I set Mailman 3 up in a day, although I was already familiar with setting up the mail (Postfix) part.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#16

Post by o11c »

teddyh wrote: post #2

Like I recently wrote in response to someone here who was fascinated that mailing lists were “still a thing in 2025”: Please, inform us of an alternative which is: • Non-proprietary • Federated • Archivable • Accessible • Not dependent on a specific company — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43972038 >

Literally any open-source forum or wiki meets all the requirements except possibly "federated" (depending on whether people set up a dump->restore to another machine), but is much more welcoming to ad-hoc contributors who don't want to subscribe to 10,000 emails per day just to get replies to their own posts.

If mailing-list users actually used CC properly this would not be a problem, but THAT IS NOT THE REALITY WE LIVE IN. Bad technical etiquette on behalf of the habitual mailing-list users is the main reason people hate mailing lists.

===

Editing to also reject some of the points from the article:

"1. Mailing lists require no special software" is utter bullshit. If you accept "must install a mail program", surely you can accept "must install lynx or curl"?

The contrast of 3/4 to forums is utter bullshit. What security/privacy risk is there in using a forum? Are they going to leak my email address or something?

... I don't even want to respond in detail to the rest of the nonsense that follows. Are they talking about some particular forum that hasn't been updated since 1999 or something? Yes these are problems which is why people have made solutions to them ...

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#17

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

mrweasel wrote: post #11
magicalhippo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newsgroups as in NNTP[1] fits those criteria, no? Granted, federated bit is more tricky now. Back in the days many if not most ISPs ran a NNTP server. But the protocol supports it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_News_Transfer_Protocol

I loved Usenet back in the day, but I sort of wonder why organisations keep their servers running. I struggle to find any active newsgroups these days. Weirdly enough spam still hits some of the groups.

And conspiracy chain mails still pondering on whether or not 9/11 was an inside job. I joined usenet recently to see how the things were, and it had some serious ghost town vibes.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#18

Post by SoftTalker »

a-dub wrote: post #14

how hard is it to run your own smtp gateway in 2025? are you good if you just set up dkim and such?

You also need a server with a good IP address reputation located in a non-sketchy country and a domain that isn't brand-new. And probably more.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#19

Post by teeray »

I set one up for our HOA as a unified conversation and notification platform. Everyone now has exactly one email address to remember to notify everyone of, say, a graduation party where there might be some extra cars. Nobody needs Facebook, or a Google account for Groups, etc. When people move, their addresses just get updated in the list.

The only trouble I had moderating it is people just love searching for whatever email was sent last to the list, necroing the thread and changing topics to whatever is on their mind. I had to set threads to auto-lock after a week or two of inactivity to force people to start new topics for things that are, well, new topics.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#20

Post by SoftTalker »

o11c wrote: post #16
teddyh wrote: post #2

Like I recently wrote in response to someone here who was fascinated that mailing lists were “still a thing in 2025”: Please, inform us of an alternative which is: • Non-proprietary • Federated • Archivable • Accessible • Not dependent on a specific company — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43972038 >

Literally any open-source forum or wiki meets all the requirements except possibly "federated" (depending on whether people set up a dump->restore to another machine), but is much more welcoming to ad-hoc contributors who don't want to subscribe to 10,000 emails per day just to get replies to their own posts. If mailing-list users actually used CC properly this would not be a problem, but THAT IS NOT THE REALITY WE L…

My problem with forums is that I am forced to use a web browser and access them through their provided interface. A lot of them, especially the older ones, are seriously hard to use and even worse on mobile.

Mailing lists I access with my preferred mail client and environment.

Receiving "10,000 emails per day" would only happen on a very active list. In most cases you're talking about a dozen or at worst a few hundred. Your email client can easily filter those into a virtual folder, and quickly find the messages where you are addressed or threads you're interested in.

Once I have the emails, I have them forever. I am not dependent on some forum remaining online five years from now if I want to go find an old message.

Web forums and wikis just suck for message-based interactions. Email is designed for that and it works really well.

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