Re: Postgres forums ... take 2 - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 11:11, Thom Brown <thom@linux.com> wrote:
> On 16 November 2010 09:30, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 03:45, Elliot Chance <elliotchance@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I have made some major changes "beta2"
>> <snip>
>>
>> > Extra thoughts;
>> >
>> > It would not be practical for the forums to create a dummy mailing list email address per person or forum,
>>
>> Why? It doesn't have to be actual mailboxes, but it needs to be a
>> deliverable email address.
>>
>> The other option is, of course, to send the email using the email
>> address the forum user uses to register with the forum. That might
>> cause issues with some antispam solutions, but as long as it's done
>> right, I think that would work.
>
> Won't the vast majority of those require moderation if users aren't
> signed up to a mailing list?  I mean we could have the "reply-to"

It would. The best way around that would be to auto-subscribe them and
set them to NOMAIL, as has been previously suggested.


>> Personally, I find the lack of this a show-stopper issue. We do *not*
>> want what's basically going to be anonymous posts on the lists.
>
> Definitely.
>
>> IMHO, there needs to be a one-to-one mapping, and nothing else.
>
> Agreed.  The justification for a forum, from my perspective, is
> another method of interacting with the mailing list to open it up to a
> wider audience.  I don't like the idea of additional forums which
> don't match a mailing list as it would not only create community
> fragmentation, but most of the people with the answers won't be
> reading the forums.

Exactly my point.


>> I'm not a big user of web forums (I use them when I have to, but it's
>> certainly not a medium I consider efficient so I don't choose it), so
>> here's a question that may be obvious, but still required: quoting.
>> Can the forum software be set up to always quote responses properly?
>> And somehow discourage top-posting in said responses? We absolutely do
>> *not* want a forum to start feeding non-quoted responses back to the
>> mailinglists, and non-quoted responses is unfortunately pretty common
>> on most forums where I usually end up - but again, that is hopefully
>> just a setting :-)
>
> Have you seen Elliot's prototype?  From what I've seen, quoting comes
> through fine.  It would just have to work correctly the other way, in
> that it sends plain text emails with correct levels of chevrons.

Yes, I'm only talking about the forum->mail direction here.


> A test mailing list will no doubt need to be set up for testing such
> functionality.  But before too much work commences on this, will this
> have the backing of the team?  I personally think, even though I don't
> want a forum myself, others will, and it would reduce barriers to the
> community.  Obviously it will need to work seamlessly too, so that it
> doesn't cause any issues on the mailing lists themselves.

Personally, I would Ok with doing this, *IF* all the issues raised are
dealt with. Particularly the posting side *must* be fixed. Without
that, it definitely won't have the backing of the
sysadmin/infrastructure team. With it, probably, but I can't speak for
others than myself.


--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/