OpenEuphoria

2. Re: mailing list

• Posted by Travis Beaty <travis_beaty at mcleodusa.net> Jun 25, 2002
• 363 views

Hello Jon!

I've also been watching the Topica situation with quite a bit of irritation,
although I do lurk more now
than I used to.  And I agree that the situation is getting out of hand, as I
agree with Derek and Kat that
something smells.


>it is a veritalbe pain in the ass to read the posts via topica.com because 
>you've either got to read them all -- click, previous, click, previous, etc. 
>-- or you've got to read the headers and gamble if THAT message is one you 
>want to read. that's why i subscibed to the digests, i should get 
>everything.

I wouldn't know, as I do not use the web interface at all.  However, I have on
numerous occasions gotten
replies to a damn post, then gotten the original a week later.  Also, from the
general flow of the list, I
can tell that there are times I don't get entire threads.  And finally, just
before Mr. Craig forwarded
the announcement to the list, I noticed that it seems to slow down to a trickle
(I'm not the only one that
noticed this), much slower than this list normally goes.  

>one, the Euforum could create a community in MSN or Yahoo! or somewhere 
>else. pros are that communities can be tailored to large groups, but the 
>cons include clunky message interfaces and attachment limits.

I can't say much for MSN other than heresay, but I know from personal experience
that Yahoo! can be a
pain.  By subscribing to their mailing list, you put your address up for grabs
to every emarketer Yahoo!
can sell them to, including those wonderful sites that love to display pictures
of naked Russian 10 year
olds.  This is one of the reasons why I abandoned a previous Yahoo address -- I
subscribed to two Yahoo!
mailing lists using that addy, and since I've been very glad I didn't use my
normal one.  I cannot speak
for everyone that reads this list, but if Euphoria did move their mailing list
over there, I would not
want to move with it.


>two, it might be possible to create a 'community' with an instant messanger 
>service like MSN or Yahoo! or ICQ or AIM, etc. this might allow for everyone 
>to get messages, but it could also let individuals communicate if they need 
>to. IMs, however, are getting insecure.

We've already got this, via IRC.  There is a Euphoria community on sorcery, in
the IRC channel #euphoria.
We for the most part have a lot of traffic there, although there are quite a few
regulars, such as Chris
Bensler, Mario Steele, Kat, and myself, amongst three or four others.  We have
been visited there by such
famous Euphoria characters as Derek Parnell and Jiri Babor.  So the IRC channel
would be a viable option
along this vein.

>three, it might be possible to head into the IRC channels. while some people 
>would be put off by it (something new, etc.) it would be almost the same as 
>doing something with IM.

Read above (didn't read this far before responding above).  The only problem
with going to IRC exclusively
would be those that either are intimidated by the IRC environment, or want the
convenience of getting
answered but into their inbox.

>four, Web sites are cheap these days. it might be possible for somebody to 
>put together a mailing list repository using open source apps. it could even 
>be a site alongside their own. after all, sending a message to 
>EUForum at Ephoria.goatmilk.com isn't much different that what we have now.

That would be good.  The question here would be dependability.  If that option
were to work, I think the
site would have to be maintained by RDS itself.  But you are right -- even some
fly-by-night hack might be
just as good as what we already have with Topica.

>
>i've got a web site with server side CGI and Perl and PHP sitting mostly 
>empty with lots of bandwidth. maybe i should see what i can do...
>
>what would really set it off would be a Euphoria mail server, but getting 
>something up and running would be more important to me.
>
>five, find another free mailing list server that has a better reputation, 
>does a better job, and doesn't lose messages like topica. yea.
>
>and yes, i know a mailing list thread was discussed a month or so ago. but 
>topica isn't getting any better.
>
>any questions, responses, etc...?

There you go, my 2.5 cents. I agree that we need desperately to find an
alternative to Topica; however, at
the same time, we don't need to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. 
Jon, since I don't know
whether or not the list is up as I type this, I'm copying it to you as well --
if you receive duplicates,
I apologize.

Thank you for letting me whine.

Respectfully y'alls,

Travis Beaty
Evans, Colorado.