emjej@uokvax.UUCP (03/12/86)
/* Written 2:46 pm Mar 6, 1986 by lauren@vortex.UUCP in net.news.group */ It would appear to me that the number of users on a site is largely irrelevant to the issue of "voting." The issue isn't really whether or not lots of people want to discuss a given topic. The issue is whether or not it makes sense to use newsgroups to handle the traffic involved in discussing such a topic. /* End of text from net.news.group */ Yes, that is *very* true, BUT--a thing I think causes people to want news- groups instead of mailing lists is that there's no *conceptual* difference between topics-that-should-be-sent-as-mailing-lists and topics-that-should- be-sent-as-newsgroups but there's a big *interface* difference between the two. Mailing-list vs. newsgroup/notesfile SHOULD BE a trivium of implemen- tation; the INTERFACE should be identical. There should be a way to "create" net.foam so that people can still use their favorite netnews-reader to read it and post to it, while underneath it gets sent in whatever way the net or the net.gods decide is the most reasonable. If the amount of traffic changes, the method of transport should be able to change without ANY of the users noticing ANY difference. James Jones
gam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett) (03/18/86)
In article <9300044@uokvax.UUCP> emjej@uokvax.UUCP writes: > Mailing-list vs. newsgroup/notesfile SHOULD BE a trivium of implemen- > tation; the INTERFACE should be identical. James is absolutely correct! It hadn't really occured to me until now why mailing lists are relatively unpopular. When we have tools of the intellegence of rn or even readnews for mailing lists, the choice will no longer be a matter of user conveinience but of sheer interest level. See! The crowd in net.general/net.followup are calling for their own net.letterman/net.latenite newsgroup! If only a mailing list were as convienient to fullfill their wishes, without burdening the rest of us! The ardent proponents of mailing lists should seek to improve the software which its readers would use! (uh, I'm busy at other projects right now, thank you ...) -- Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,seismo,hplabs}!amdahl!gam " ... that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government ...."
donn@utah-cs.UUCP (Donn Seeley) (03/20/86)
If you're running 2.10.3 B news with moderator software, you can treat a mailing list exactly like a moderated newsgroup. Let's say you want to subscribe to the mailing list 'nbc-volume!latenite'. Create the local newsgroup 'mail.latenite' and put the line mail.latenite nbc-volume!latenite in your 'moderators' file. Add an appropriate mail alias; e.g. for sendmail, you could use: mail-latenite: "|/usr/new/lib/news/recnews mail.latenite" Send mail to 'nbc-volume!latenite-request' asking that mailing list messages be sent to the address mail-latenite at your site. Then subscribe to 'mail.latenite' and you're all set. The 2.10.3 postnews will automatically mail instead of post any messages to 'mail.latenite', and followups to articles in that group will also be mailed (beware -- some versions of postnews are broken and don't support this). I don't know if 'rn' supports this; it shouldn't be difficult to arrange if it doesn't. We actually use this here at Utah, Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn