rant about mailing lists
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:12 amThis post is a rant. Take it with a grain of salt.
Executive summary: I don’t like mailing lists. I think they’re a thing of the past, and these days using a web interface like a forum or a Google Group makes much more sense. So, it makes me angry that a lot of groups I’m interested in lately hold their discussions in mailing lists.
Mailing lists used to be popular some years ago. Sure, when web access was via a modem and you only connected for an hour a day, it was convenient to download all the mail to your PC and read it offline.
But today, with fast, permanent web connections for almost everyone, I think mailing lists are an anachronism. Forums and places like Google Groups are much better - they present all the information with full archives in a single place, you don’t have to fill your mailbox with all the list’s messages, and it’s easy to post and view discussions in hierarchical threads.
With a mailing list that delivers dozens of mails per day, you have to have an inbox full of mailing list correspondence, have no good search possibilities and can’t see thread hierarchies - everything is flat. So why is it good, why many groups still prefer this discussion method ?
Specifically, I fume about Python. Although its main mailing list is reflected to comp.lang.python, most of the libraries and topical discussion groups use mailing lists, to which you have to subscribe. So let me get this straight. I’m interested in distutils, py2exe, matplotlib, wxPython and several other libraries. Does it really mean I have to subscribe to a gazillion mailing lists, just to go and ask a question / search for answers in one of them, once in a blue moon ? What other option to I have if I want to be able to post ?
Sure, there are sites like Nabble and Gmane, that reflect mailing lists to hierarchical forums bi-directionally, and they are great. I personally use Nabble for most of my participation in Python-related lists.
But some mailing lists haven’t registered with such services, so all that’s left is using the mailing list itself. In particular, I’m fuming about python-es, a mailing list for Python in the Spanish language, which isn’t connected to Nabble and is already registered in Gmane as read-only. Argh, this is annoying.
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August 2nd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
>can’t see thread hierarchies - everything is flat
Actually, it’s not flat. All messages carry fields in their header that mail clients use to show messages hierarchically (the fields are Message-ID and In-Reply-To). Actually, I do not know a single mail client that does not do this.
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Eli, the problem is not the mailing lists, but the fact that you don’t use the right tools. Every sensible mail client should be able to show threads and the relations between the messages. Note also that google groups, which you seem to like, is just a web interface to the nntp based messaging system beneath. If you read the groups you like, e.g. comp.lang.python, with a proper newsreader you’ll probably see even more functionality you’re missing.
The reason you are having a problem is you have a hammer, and all your problems looks like nails. A webbrowser isn’t nessesarily the best interface to every kind of discussion media. Note also that there’s a difference in push or pull. E-mail come to you, and I find it superior to all kinds of web based communication which in my view is just as fragmented as you view mailing lists. I don’t care if there’s six different mailing lists, since they all come delivered to my inbox. YMMV.
Personally I think discussions in newsgroups (i.e. nntp based) are superior to both e-mail and all kinds of web based interfaces.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Try GMail even if you only use it for mailing lists. It does mailing lists right (threads discussions, minimizes duplicate information in threads, and more). It makes mailing lists usable and these features are the main things keeping me using GMail as they are done very well.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
GMail has a big problem though - it dumps everything into the inbox. Labels don’t help me here - all my mail will get swamped in the flux of a high-traffic mailing list.
August 4th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Yes, that is true but for each mailing list I setup a filter that makes the list traffic skip the inbox and get tagged with a filter (so it’s like having a folder basically). Without that, I’d not be using GMail!
August 4th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Cymen,
I wasn’t aware of the “skip inbox” option. I’ll give it a try.
Thanks a lot for the recommendation