Hi, On 05/24/2014 04:34 PM, christopher.l...@thurweb.ch wrote: > Hi Lauri > > That is an interesting perspective: my feeling / experience was > exactly the opposite: the chief weakness of mailing lists is that they > have no usability whatsoever: I get just a flat list of unorganised > mails swamping my inbox.
That sounds like you don't have a good grip on your mailbox. But let me pick apart your arguments below, one by one, just because I'm in the mood. > That of course may be down to the weaknesses of the web-mail client I > use. Indeed. But even there web clients usually, at the very least allow sorting into folders and bypassing the inbox. > I would welcome advice on "best-practice" tools for consuming mailing > lists. I am (mostly) on OSX, sometimes on Windows and Linux. To quote > Churchill "give us the tools and we will do the job". I'm not going to recommend one particular MUA (Mail User Agent), that would be like screaming Yehova at the top of my lungs. There are clients aplenty, graphical, console, complicated, easy. Spend an hour or two reading about mail clients and mailing lists. You'll NEVER want to go back to forums. In addition there are good web interfaces for reading up on mailing lists. I use that if I'm not close to my personal MUA or not subscribed to a list. See GMANE et al. > From my point-of-view, plus points for usability of forums over > mailing lists are (in no special order): > * Stickies That's a web-interface thing. The analogue would be a wiki page introducing you to the mailing list, pointing out ground rules and a link to a FAQ. > * Sub forums Mailing lists on mailman can have "topics", but I rarely see this used outside lkml(?). We are currently pondering a split to several mailing lists, that's the other possibility. > * Search Most of the time I'm much faster searching either my mailing list directory or the web archive of said list through the search engine of my least distrust. (hint: add "site:lists.sailfishos.org" to your search) > * Private Messages I'm not sure if you are serious. Did you hear about this thing called … email? > * Edit previous posts (I could have used that today when I > inadvertently clicked send too early) Yes, that's an inherent limitation. Actually the only one in this mail that I can't and won't pick apart. > * Thread based perspective Beat this: http://ruecker.fi/foss/sailfish/Thunderbird_screenshot_2014-05-24T17:11:47.png That's my Thunderbird. Other MUAs have different options. Everyone can chose the way that fits their way of reading a list. Where as with a forum you get ONE way or the highway. > * Does not fill my mail file If you are not using subdirectories, yes. Start using sub directories. Or get an email account for mailing list usage. I see many people do that. > * Visible metadata such as number of replies, date of most recent > reply, number of posts etc. Again threaded view gives you a good idea what's going on in a thread. > Downsides of forums are: > * yet another user/password to manage (although a forum could be > integrated into together.jolla.com > * yet another site to visit regularly (in addition to my mail client) If you want a forum, TJC is already very close to it, including all the downsides of horrible noise and impossible to find things. Even Jolla loses track of important items there. > * karma: so distracting, I prefer the simple egalitarianism / > meritocracy of mailing lists Could be folded into a mailing list feature too, just to annoy you. Just kidding. But knowing the Intarwebz™, someone has done that already… > Zitat von "Lauri Nurmi" <lanu...@iki.fi>: > >> 24.5.2014 13:56, christopher.l...@thurweb.ch kirjoitti: >>> My suggestion is that rather than splitting into multiple mailing >>> lists, which does not really cure anything, you replace the mailing >>> lists with a forum. I agree it would be crazy to have both. >> >> -1 >> >> Is there any forum platform whose usability is not totally terrible >> compared to mailing lists? >> >> First of all, to be able to keep track of who has replied to whose >> post, and which post, I want to see the posts as a tree. But offering >> such a tree view seems to be very rare on forums. >> Still want to have a forum? ;-) Cheers Thomas _______________________________________________ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list To unsubscribe, please send a mail to devel-unsubscr...@lists.sailfishos.org
