Subject: RE: mailing list

From: [email-masked] (Ninoles, Fabien: DGSE)
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 18:02:52 -0400

The problem it's I can't put everything on my online
account and they (administrator) don't have procmail
or mh...

Whatever, I did my suggestions after seeing so mush
mail be reply two or three times for the same problem
with the same answer. That's good for the reputation
of the mail list but mush of the time, it's because
we try to answer directly to the user without checking
what other people already answered. (I do it myself
more of the time). Results: many answers mainly
identicals to a same problems.

More of that, a news group is more organized. Thread
are follow up and it's easy to jump over some who
don't interested yourself. This will help people to
got an answer more easily and more quickly, and to
free a bit the traffic on this mail list (Debian-users).

About the CGI-news thread... I remember to see one in
a HOWTO contributions page... But where? Sorry, I was
looking and don't find it. To give you an idea... it
looks like a news browser on the web. You can start
a thread, reply to a thread, and adding simple HTML
editing you want. All the work are done by forms and CGI
and a Diggest version of the threads are automaticly archive.

Keeping it simple an people can see it on lynx. But I will
keep the other mail lists (like announce and change) in this
current form. I really that can improves the project.

Thanks and sorry for this long reply,
Fab.

 ----------
From:  Philippe Troin[SMTP:[email-masked]]
Sent:  Wednesday, August 28, 1996 11:44 AM
To:  Ninoles, Fabien: DGSE
Cc:  debian-user
Subject:  Re: mailing list

On Wed, 28 Aug 1996 10:20:41 EDT Ninoles, Fabien: DGSE
([email-masked]) wrote:

> Two things I would like to see in the Debian Mailing Lists:
> First... An added [Debian:] tag before the suggest for those
> like me who receive from mush than one list.

Why ? Use procmail or mh or whatever to split your incoming mail.
I've goit a .maildelivery file that I can share with you.

> A good thing to see is some news mecanism. Aren't time to put
> Debian list on news groups? They aren't enought users? I think
> that we got so more users and be more accessible if we put
> almost Debian-Users on news (mostly a moderate one but we can do
> without). I receive near to 50 mails by day just from this list
> and it's not the only one I'm suscribed! News group will help
> to keep track of which mail was already replied and will avoid
> some traceback.

Can you elaborate on that ?

> About other news mecanism, I was thinking about some web-news
> service such the one from O'Really. I'm not really good in doing
> CGI but I can try to do something (or let this to someone else)
> if you're interested.

Where can we see this stuff ?
There's already the debian mailing list archives on the Debian
homepage.

Phil.

---

From: Buddha Buck <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 23:19:25 -0400

> account and they (administrator) don't have procmail

That's one reason why I use MH on my home machine...  Nobody but me 
cares that I have 100MB of archived mail.  I can do any sort of 
filtering I want, and so forth.  That's one of the nice things about 
running Linux... you are free to use sophisticated tools your ISP won't 
let you.

> That's good for the reputation

Yes, and this happens also on newsgroups.  If anything, it is -worse- 
on newsgroups, since people are more likely to follow-up without 
checking or before propagation delays allow them to even seee the other 
followups.  Newsgroups also have larger propagation, and attract spam, 
flames, irrelavancies, meaningless crossposts, and so forth.  Can you 
imagine if a comp.os.linux.advocacy/comp.os.windows.advocacy 
crossposting got into ...debian.users?

The only real solution would be to moderate it, which would overwork 
some poor volunteer and probably change the flavor of the list.

> free a bit the traffic on this mail list (Debian-users).

This is a mis-conception.  Newsgroups are only -slightly- more 
organized than mailing lists, in that newsgroups add an additional 
header: "References", which allows newsreaders to tie articles together 
into threads a bit easier.  A mail program should also be able to do 
some degree of threading.  Granted, most mail programs don't, but then, 
neither does rn, one of the classic news programs out there.

> looking and don't find it. 

And that is part of the problem...  The Kernel Hacker's Guide is like 
that, but I don't read it as much as I wanted to when I first saw it.  
Where was that?  I don't know, it's in my Netscape bookmarks.  But I 
don't leave Netscape up all the time, it's a memory hog.  My mail 
reader, however, isn't.  I also don't have to be online, nor do I have 
to go to it, and so forth.

-- 
     Buddha Buck                      [email-masked]
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacaphony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects."  -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice

---

From: Kevin M Bealer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 01:32:35 -0400 (EDT)

> free a bit the traffic on this mail list (Debian-users).
(clipped)

If you haven't yet, I suggest you look at pine.  Pine can be set
to sort on "ordered subject" and will behave like a threaded
news reader.  (I think it isn't "actually threaded" but I don't
know the exact difference.)  Pine makes newgroups and mailing
lists almost equivalent.  (some people don't like that design,
though.)

[email-masked]/GNU--1.1---Linux--2.0.14---
    Develop free apps?  Look at http://www.ied.com/~honza/fslu/
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.

---

From: Steve Dunham <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Aug 1996 11:12:55 -0400

> lists almost equivalent.  (some people don't like that design,

Or, if you prefer, you can use GNUS.  For me, procmail dumps
debian-user into the file incoming/mail.lists.debian-user.spool, GNUS
automatically adds those messages to a special mail folder,
'mail.lists.debian-user', which looks just like a newsgroup.  I sort
about 10 mailing lists this way and read them just like newsgroups.
Some have auto-expire set, others do not.

This gives you scoring and threading for free.  Without this, I would
not read mailling lists.

(Or, if you prefer command line interfaces, you may want to check out
MH) 

Steve
[email-masked]

---

From: Rob Browning <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Aug 1996 17:47:41 -0500

> Some have auto-expire set, others do not.

You can also do this directly from GNUS without procmail.  Something
like:

(setq 
 nnmail-split-methods 
 '(
   ("duplicates"  "^Gnus-Warning:")
   ("debian-devel" "^Resent-From: [email-masked]")
   ("debian-user" "^Resent-From: [email-masked]")
   ("debian-bugs" "^Subject: \\(Re: \\)?Bug#[0-9]+:")
   ("guile" "^Sender: [email-masked]") 
    ;"^\\(To\\|[Cc][Cc]\\):[^:][email-masked][^:]*\\(^\\w+:\\|\\n\\n\\)")
   ("inbox"       "")))

works for me.  Gnus then just gets and splits the contents of
/var/spool/mail/whoever itself.

> This gives you scoring and threading for free.  Without this, I would

Sure does make it easier anyway.

--
Rob