[erlang-questions] List vs Group

[Miles Fidelman]

Raimo Niskanen wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> We are thinking about not allowing members of the Google group
> Erlang Programming to post to the group.
>
> This is why:
>
> Once the group was set up as a mirror of the mailing list erlang-questions.
>
> Then people could read the list in Google groups's forum like web
> interface, they could also join the group, and when posting, if they
> posted to the mailing list too and were members of the mailing list
> it all worked fine.

When I first read the subject line, I was expecting the standard "let's 
make this a web forum" post that shows up on every list, everywhere, 
about once a year.  Glad to see that's not what this is about (I've yet 
to see that conversion end well).
> How much would this disturb group users?  Since I do not use the group
> myself I would not know...
>

Wouldn't disturb me a bit - I subscribe to the list directly (except for 
the loss of information that might accrue if we end up with a fractured 
community).

Just a thought: If there are significant numbers of list members who 
prefer a web interface, there are list managers that provide a web 
interface that's married at the hip to the list functions - which avoids 
the problems described here.  Both google groups and yahoo groups do 
that - but I've personally found Sympa (www.sympa.org) to be a pretty 
powerful, open-source list manager that also has web functionality.  
There's also groupserver (groupserver.org).  Then again, I've never 
quite understand why anybody prefers to read list traffic via a web 
interface - it's just so cumbersome compared to any reasonable email client.

Miles Fidelman



-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra