Protocols not platforms. Email is something anyone can use without a megacorp giving permission!
Think twice
Why use mailing lists?
51–60 of 202 posts
Re: Why use mailing lists?
#52Mailing lists are horrible for people new to a list, as you have no history to search in your inbox and the UI to browse the archives are beyond atrocious.
People that have been on the list for decades tend to forget this, and wonder why it dies down
Re: Why use mailing lists?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 hundre…
I find that people who complain about email volume are not only unfamiliar with setting up rules to file messages into folders, but entirely uninterested in learning how to leverage their tools that way. In fact, it seems many of them resent having to learn anything in order to be more productive, instead insisting the burden belongs on others. “I don’t want to get all that email, so it’s OK for me to make you visit…
It's replicated work for every person who wants to set up filters and notifications. Discord or whatever has defaults that don't require everyone to create their custom environment.
Re: Why use mailing lists?
#54Like 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 >
RSS?
Re: Why use mailing lists?
#55I’ve been running Gaggle Mail (https://gaggle.email) for over 10 years, and mailing lists are still very popular in certain circles. They’re especially valued for long-form discussions — legal groups, professional associations, HOAs, and similar communities still rely on them because they’re simple, reliable, and easy to archive.
Re: Why use mailing lists?
#56Like 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 >
And those are the exact same reasons I loath the trend of discourse moving into discord groups, or slack groups, hell I've even seen Facebook groups. None of those are reachable without an account and in many cases an invite (private by default), they are not indexed by search engines, they are proprietary, cannot be exported or archived, etc. It's asking for knowledge to be lost.
I'm gradually switching our in-person community to Revolt [0] because we want to self-host and own the data. (Discord offers extreme convenience, but it's a black-box for-profit platform.)
We don't want casual discourse to be indexed to the public. Instead we'll host a wiki system soon that bubbles up technical chatter into worthy articles.
Is that a reasonable compromise?
Re: Why use mailing lists?
#57I hate mailing lists, even if I recognize some of their benefits. A forum like Discourse is infinitely better in usability - to view, browse, search, follow specific threads or forums and mute the rest, do DMs, do real nested replies, embed rich media and code with proper formatting and just have a nice interface to work with. It looks like they even support ActivityPub federation recently. Although its GPL not MIT.…
I hate the look of Discourse, it looks like the worst case of a phone app and ""modern"" web design
I think it's primarily due to absence of margins on the sides and thin borders
Re: Why use mailing lists?
#58how hard is it to run your own smtp gateway in 2025? are you good if you just set up dkim and such?
Hard. You need reverse DNS, which means you need to have a machine with a stable ip, and convince the network operator to set up a PTR reverse DNS record for you. This part is fairly easy if you are renting a VPS with a fixed ipv4 address, just ask the rental company.
You also need to set up mx, dkim, dmarc, spf, and a bunch of other stupid DNS records related to dane/tlsa/mta-sts that aim to put bandaids on top of bandaids on top of what is the shitty unsecured and unencrypted email protocol.
Then you need to fight with a bunch of arcane 90s Unix programs to actually not be gaping security holes that will allow people to relay off of your MTA and get you blacklisted worldwide. You need to fight with a milter and acme client to finally get the TLS stuff right too. Then there's the need to set up a spam filter for your inbox (probably).
Re: Why use mailing lists?
#59Like 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 >
This is why I run a newsletter.
I love the simplicity of it.
Re: Why use mailing lists?
#60All this is true but mailing lists UI sucks. Please tell me how you navigate a tree of messages? It is not easy to tell who is this responding to and who responds to it. Yes, it can be figured out but why does the tree change as I navigate it? [0]