[lpi-discuss] Re: LPI Forums site -- why HTTP sucks compared to SMTP/NNTP

[ross e. brunson]

I just love replying to Bryan's reply to someone else's posting...

On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 11:34 -0500, Bryan J. Smith  wrote:
> From: Grant Sewell <g.sewell at thymox.uklinux.net>
> > I think that forums tend to lend themselves to a wider audience.
> > Although I am also a fan of mailing lists, I do find that some of the
> > public archives from some mailing lists are absolutely horrendous to
> > navigate through, which makes it quite difficult to follow.
> 
> Well, that depends on the poster.
> 
> I purposely use the old O'Reilly UseNet Guidelines and often append the
> subject in my responses.  The Message-ID of both SMTP and NNTP are
> still kept intact, which means that SMTP archiving programs, like NNTP
> archives, can correlate responses, even if the subject changes.  This
> was always required anyway, since not every mail or news reader
> properly handles the "Re/RE" and other subject prefixes anyway.

Right, but this comes under the heading of "You'll go bleeping bonkers
trying to get all users to follow what even may be good practice but
takes actual thoughtfulness".  Suddenly we all sound old and crabby, so
learn to love the emoticon and spell all your e's with 3's and
substitute 0 for o's, it's fun!  (Can't keep a straight face on that
one).

> I know people that find my posts in Google searches thank me for
> appending the subject when they are digging through 30+ responses
> in an archive.
> 
> Unfortunately, the "new age" web mail readers -- including GMail --
> totally _ignore_ the Message-ID header and attempt to do subject
> sorting and correlation.  It's good in many cases, but bombs on
> various pre-fixes.  And it definitely gets screwed up by people like
> myself who apply old-school UseNet posting concepts and append
> the subject.

Yep, it's never been the same since AOL gateway'ed the entire lot of
n00bi3s onto the web.  Most people on the original then-internet's
reaction was violent, hateful and caused much battling back and forth
for years between the "Nethnic" groups. I was there and simply ignored
the influx for the most part. 

The newbies were about the most irritating bunch of clueless droobs
since itching powder was invented, but they have eventually stopped
posting IN ALL CAPS and double-spacing emails etc. and some I know of
have actually become very useful netizens.

> I've never received so much hate mail from list members until the
> last 4-5 years because of these "new age" web mail readers that
> don't bother with the 30+ year concept such as Message-ID.

Sure, that's it, blame all that hate mail on the new age web mail
readers. 8-P  Some of them weren't even *alive* then...

> Which is why I'm a _huge_ fan of NNTP-based interfaces into
> discussion archives.  Even if the eventual goal is to give the user
> a web front-end, I still think the back-end should be SMTP and/or
> NNTP because such archivers almost _always_ preserve Message-ID.

I really don't care what the backend is, as long as the front-end is
readable and doesn't look too cartoony.  PHPBB is good, there are others
out there that are nicer or work differently, but as long as the
interface doesn't get in the way, it's fine.

> > Some mailing lists do not have public archives, so this can dissuade
> > people from using them.  Also, particularly with higher volume lists,
> > those on low bandwidth connections may choose not to participate
> > due to the fact that it could well saturate their line for a while with
> > potentially large volumes of email traffic, of which 90% they are not
> > interested in.
> 
> Which is why I like NNTP-interfaces.  And for those who don't know
> what NNTP stands for, then you give them a web front-end.
> 
> > For some, a forum is a much better option.  They usually have much
> > clearer structures and have clearer search facilities.  The user doesn't
> > need to be downloading lots of information in which they have no
> > interest.
> 
> Unfortunately, web interfaces are arbitrary and free-form.  Which is,
> yet again, why I prefer at least a SMTP/NNTP archiving back-end.
> Any web front-end should interface into those.

Agreed, lets do a test, everyone submit your fave board so we can see
what the options are for Matt to test out for interfaces and such.

Ross

> 
> 
> 
> --
> Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org
> 
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