Re: mailing list

Thanks Luke,

Item notes is the detail I was looking for.  Sorry for the confusion.

Regards,

Todd.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Luke" <sl-cF6LsJQjnDulvfXGSJY/[email protected]>
To: "SQL support" <sql-ledger-users-5NWGOfrQmneRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f@public.gmane.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 12:30 AM
Subject: Re: [SL] mailing list


On Thu, 11 May 2006, David J wrote:

> Newbie here. Pls be gentle.

Okay.  Welcome, and may I gently request that you use full words, not SMS 
messaging abbreviation?  Just a thought.  (re "pls")

> And I've become less than enthusiastic about the way this mailing list
> works.
> While I'm happy to have a stream of emails filtered into an SQL-Ledger
> directory of my mail system (OpenWebMail),
> its quite tedious and difficult to follow the chronology of some
> messages. Simply, there's no threading.

By threading, do you mean "messages organized according to subject"?  Or 
do you mean "messages organized by subject, from this and previous 
discussions with similar subjects, possibly before I subscribed to the 
list"?

If the former: it is a failing of your mail software--this works fine for 
others, myself included, using non-webmail software (for me, it's pine 
under FreeBSD).

If you mean the latter: I recognize that this might be considered 
annoying; you must use the archives.  Since subject lines for similar 
topics are rarely identical, however, the value of that would seem 
limited, and you would have to search the archives with or without 
threading.

> How can I quickly determine whether an old question has already been
> answered ?

Google and the archives.  I can not speak to the bugginess of the SF 
archival system--I would suggest you file a complaint with their support 
staff if the problem persists.

> Has anybody considered setting up a typical web-based forum like so many
> other systems use ?

Just a personal observation, so take it for what it's worth: developers, 
and tech support forums related to a single product, project, or service, 
often take the form of mailing lists, while defuse support systems for 
multiple products, etc., often do well with web forum management systems.

> Most forums work so much better than this quaintly old-fashioned
> mailing-list technology.

Quaintly old-fashioned, is it?:)  Then I suppose I am happy to be a 
reputed old fogie.

Is it that the point and click generation like web forums where they have 
to go after the content; whereas the generation for whom email was the end 
all, be all, and reason for using the net in the first place, and who 
otherwise have full schedules of work, business, families, etc., prefer 
having the content conveniently delivered to them?
That certainly is true for me--I don't have time to go hunting down 
questions and answers on a web forum, especially when all I have to do is 
press five keys, and I am reading SL related messages in a nice clean 
folder of their own, which I can duck in and out of at will, without 
having to maintain several active Screens/windows (of which I already have 
quite enough running at any given time).

> Whats the downsides of a user-forum instead of mail-list ?

Convenience.  I want it coming to me, I don't want to be going to it (and 
then logging in, juggling passwords, dealing with a clunky web interface, 
playing with text area sizes, etc.).  That's the downside from my 
prospective.

By the way, if mailing lists were quaint and old fashioned, YahooGroups 
would not still be in business and growing daily.  Now, I'm no big fan of 
yahoogroups (but then I run my own list servers, so don't have to be:)), 
but they are just one of many.
Of course, they have a bit of the best of both worlds, giving web access 
to their messages.  However, most good mailing list software is catching 
on to the fact that some people actually do prefer a web interface, and it 
is useful for archiving.  Unfortunately, I still haven't found Mailman to 
be particularly great at doing this.  I'm a Sympa fan, although that's 
neither here nor there.

> IMHO a phpBB based (or similar) user forum would be a real benefit to the
> community of SQL-Ledger usres.

and a real pita to those of us who don't have the time or patience for yet 
another just slightly different interface.

> So here goes. I press the "Send" button knowing that I cannot edit,
> amend or correct this post after its gone.

Oh, the horror!  Actually having to commit to saying one specific 
thing!:)  (tongue firmly planted in cheek)
A good point, of course, but it just goes to confirm, that one should take 
the time and care to get it right the first time!  Or is the art of 
writing really and truly dead?:)

Luke