dmiessler.com | grep understanding - Latest Comments in Why I Hate Mailing Lists

Re: Why I Hate Mailing Lists

Neil — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:16:46 -0000

"A forum with an accompanying RSS/Atom feed"

Re: Why I Hate Mailing Lists

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 11:26:46 -0000

Any decent mail filter (e.g., procmail) can handle this problem

Re: Why I Hate Mailing Lists

Tim — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 09:41:12 -0000

Yeah. A forum or nntp server works *so* much better than a mailing list.

Re: Why I Hate Mailing Lists

Darren Chamberlain — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:54:47 -0000

I've found that most of the lists I'm on -- which are mostly deeply technical lists hosted by the w3.org, sourceforge, perl.org, python.org, and so on -- tend to not have this problem. I don't know what kinds of lists you're on, of course, but I think the symptoms you are describing are symptoms of amateurism (not on your part; I mean the people who are setting up the autoresponders), and not inherent in the medium. For many lists, something like Google/Yahoo groups are probably the most appropriate -- I think that those systems do a good job at filtering out this kind of thing, while mailman and majordomo don't even attempt it.

@Marcin: I have never been able to get into web-based message boards and forums. The batch-based nature of the web simply doesn't translate well to an interactive conversation. I've yet to see a forums system that doesn't repeat all of the problems of usenet, without any of the solutions or optimizations that arose around usenet, like intelligent, protocol-specific clients and redistribution/local caching.

Re: Why I Hate Mailing Lists

danielrm26 — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 03:07:01 -0000

Interesting, I'll check into it. Do they have a link to it on altavista.com? That's where I search for stuff. ;)

Re: Why I Hate Mailing Lists

Marcin — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 02:47:05 -0000

Yeah, it's already out. It's called a forum or message board ;)