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Why use mailing lists?

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Re: Why use mailing lists?

#181

Post by eschaton »

nanolith wrote: post #95

I have actually argued for the use of mailing lists for corporate engineering discussions. When that becomes the medium for code review or design discussions, there's a nice streamlined workflow. Further, it's practically trivial to write or customize a mailing list reflector. If you have a decent and secure mail client library, you're a weekend away from it just working. Contrast that with customizing or rolling you…

I think for internal corporate use, NNTP would work even better, if it were still supported in mail clients. I deployed it for exactly that purpose in the late 1990s and it was great.

Fortunately there are IMAP shared mailboxes, which we worked incredibly hard at CMU during the Cyrus project to ensure would work just as well as bboards did in CMU’s previous Andrew Mail System. (“Bulletin boards,” aka bboards, were basically CMU-local Usenet, with global Usenet under a netnews.* hierarchy via a gateway.)

Most IMAP clients worth their salt support shared mailbox hierarchies, even Apple Mail does, so it’s “just” a matter of setting up shared groups on a server.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#182

Post by zzo38computer »

eschaton wrote: post #181
nanolith wrote: post #95

I have actually argued for the use of mailing lists for corporate engineering discussions. When that becomes the medium for code review or design discussions, there's a nice streamlined workflow. Further, it's practically trivial to write or customize a mailing list reflector. If you have a decent and secure mail client library, you're a weekend away from it just working. Contrast that with customizing or rolling you…

I think for internal corporate use, NNTP would work even better, if it were still supported in mail clients. I deployed it for exactly that purpose in the late 1990s and it was great. Fortunately there are IMAP shared mailboxes, which we worked incredibly hard at CMU during the Cyrus project to ensure would work just as well as bboards did in CMU’s previous Andrew Mail System. (“Bulletin boards,” aka bboards, were ba…

I agree that NNTP would be better. I do have a NNTP server because of this, although my intention is that it can be used for public discussions and not only for internal corporate use, although I did implement authentication in case some newsgroups are used for private discussions too.

(Note, the article in the IETF mailing list does mention Usenet too)

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#183

Post by nickm12 »

eschaton wrote: post #180
nickm12 wrote: post #102

Agree these are advantages: Mailing lists are simple - Mailing lists are bandwidth-friendly - Mailing lists interoperate - They're asynchronous - They're portable - They can be freely interconverted - They can be written to media and read from it Disagree these are advantages: Mailing lists require no special software - They impose minimal security risk - They impose minimal privacy risk - They're push, not pull, so…

What makes them “feel like 1970s technology” to you, and—more importantly—why do you say that like it’s a bad thing? Most of the opposition I’ve seen to using mailing lists for technical discussion has basically come down to “young people think email is old and gross” and my position is that people reacting that way have some self-reflection to do and to get over themselves.

What makes them feel like 1970s technology: everyone has to manually manage their own archive and pay storage costs for media files, there is no way to share history (if you want), there is no integrated search, differences in clients mean that people have different experiences of the same message, there are no affordances like reactions that allow people to easily interact with a message without sending an entire separate message.

But maybe I should have said late 80s, early 90s tech. In the 70s, if you were communicating with others on a computer, you were almost certainly using the exact same software on the exact same time-shared system, where at least there was a symmetry of experiences (but no multimedia). The explosion of email clients happened in the 90s, mostly.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#184

Post by nickm12 »

jjav wrote: post #177
nickm12 wrote: post #102

Agree these are advantages: Mailing lists are simple - Mailing lists are bandwidth-friendly - Mailing lists interoperate - They're asynchronous - They're portable - They can be freely interconverted - They can be written to media and read from it Disagree these are advantages: Mailing lists require no special software - They impose minimal security risk - They impose minimal privacy risk - They're push, not pull, so…

> but there's no business model in it. I mean this is precisly why email is best. Being an open standard, it's not a business. Nobody owns it, nobody can. Those are fundamental to its strenght.

Sorry, I disagree. The lack of a business model means a lack of competition and a weak market. For years I've been looking to find an email list hosting solution that works for a small family, sports team, friends group, etc. There is next to nothing in this space besides Google Groups. There are a few hosted mailing list solutions, but they have enterprise features and pricing.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#185

Post by eschaton »

nickm12 wrote: post #183
eschaton wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes them “feel like 1970s technology” to you, and—more importantly—why do you say that like it’s a bad thing? Most of the opposition I’ve seen to using mailing lists for technical discussion has basically come down to “young people think email is old and gross” and my position is that people reacting that way have some self-reflection to do and to get over themselves.

What makes them feel like 1970s technology: everyone has to manually manage their own archive and pay storage costs for media files, there is no way to share history (if you want), there is no integrated search, differences in clients mean that people have different experiences of the same message, there are no affordances like reactions that allow people to easily interact with a message without sending an entire se…

Oh no, people have to consider how they engage with others’ writing! They can’t just push a “like” or “thumbs down” button! There will be social pressure against it if they try to just send around picture or video memes instead of writing something thoughtful! And worst, everyone gets to be in control of their “experience of the same message,” by using the mail client that works best for them!

All of the reasons you say mailing lists are, let’s say, “dated” are actually benefits of using them, especially when using them for engineering purposes.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#186

Post by replwoacause »

pwdisswordfishz wrote: post #155
throw7 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I was hoping to check out ladybird browser project, but they use discord.

There are other problems besides access. The big one being that the people that you'll find on Discord are the kinds of people that you'll find on Discord.

Yeah I tried to use Discord on two different occasions and each time I hated it.

Why do people want to share information someplace that gets lost to the sands of time?

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#187

Post by nickm12 »

eschaton wrote: post #185
nickm12 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes them feel like 1970s technology: everyone has to manually manage their own archive and pay storage costs for media files, there is no way to share history (if you want), there is no integrated search, differences in clients mean that people have different experiences of the same message, there are no affordances like reactions that allow people to easily interact with a message without sending an entire se…

Oh no, people have to consider how they engage with others’ writing! They can’t just push a “like” or “thumbs down” button! There will be social pressure against it if they try to just send around picture or video memes instead of writing something thoughtful! And worst, everyone gets to be in control of their “experience of the same message,” by using the mail client that works best for them! All of the reasons you…

I agree that the available features can steer the online community culture and behaviors, but it's not determinative. I don't see why online communities should give up useful features just because other communities use them in a way you don't like.

I've been using mailing lists for about 30 years now. In the days before social networks, there was tons of forwarded crap and email chains, such that debunking them was a cottage industry. This behavior eventually moved to Facebook and Twitter which is perhaps why email lists seem more civilized these days, but I don't believe its the features that are driving it.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#188

Post by jjav »

nickm12 wrote: post #184
jjav wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but there's no business model in it. I mean this is precisly why email is best. Being an open standard, it's not a business. Nobody owns it, nobody can. Those are fundamental to its strenght.

Sorry, I disagree. The lack of a business model means a lack of competition and a weak market. For years I've been looking to find an email list hosting solution that works for a small family, sports team, friends group, etc. There is next to nothing in this space besides Google Groups. There are a few hosted mailing list solutions, but they have enterprise features and pricing.

groups.io is decent if you're looking for hosted solutions. Most of the mailing lists I'm on that used to be on yahoo groups moved to groups.io

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#189

Post by nickm12 »

jjav wrote: post #188
nickm12 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I disagree. The lack of a business model means a lack of competition and a weak market. For years I've been looking to find an email list hosting solution that works for a small family, sports team, friends group, etc. There is next to nothing in this space besides Google Groups. There are a few hosted mailing list solutions, but they have enterprise features and pricing.

groups.io is decent if you're looking for hosted solutions. Most of the mailing lists I'm on that used to be on yahoo groups moved to groups.io

$240/yr is a lot to just have a couple of family mailing lists. Even for creating mailing lists for youth sports teams, local civic orgs, and things like that it's really high.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#190

Post by jjav »

nickm12 wrote: post #189
jjav wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

groups.io is decent if you're looking for hosted solutions. Most of the mailing lists I'm on that used to be on yahoo groups moved to groups.io

$240/yr is a lot to just have a couple of family mailing lists. Even for creating mailing lists for youth sports teams, local civic orgs, and things like that it's really high.

groups.io lists are free for lists with under 100 participants, the $20/mo would be for a premium plan which doesn't sound like you'd need that.

https://groups.io/static/compare

google mailing lists are also free. I still host one there, although mostly try to not use google. But it's another free choice.

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