Why I prefer BBS:es:
1. Discussion is closer to content because both are webbased.
2. Threads can be followed more easily. There is no way that a mailprogam can figure out in which thread this reply belongs to for example because I use digest mode.
3. I can edit my post after it has been written, if that feature is desireable. This also means that post publishing moderation will be easier which is preferable to prepublishing that a mailinglist requires.
4. How does this look?:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Hello >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>I
really
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>wonder >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>if this >>>>>>>>>>>is >>>>>>>>>>>>>readable >>>>>because different mailprograms use different styles for
quotation bla<hej>weird eh?>
5. From time to time there comes someone who replies to the whole digest without deleting anything.
6. I dont have to read "Do you have Yahoo?" 2,000,000 times.
7. Many users use the Internet at work or school where they dont have access to mail only to the web.
8. Using webmail like Hotmail is not fun to read mailinglists on. Your mailbox fills up with spam instantly and the interfaces are usually very cumbersome.
9. Because I can write down all the e-mailadresses i get from the list and spam you with penis-enlargements. Bush could easily track all Afgan terrorists on this list down if he wanted to - would be much harder on a BBS.
10. I have to wait a day for new letters to arrive because I use digest mode and if I dont my mailbox will get clogged. BBS:es enables immidiate response.
11. When many topics is discussed simultaneously it becomes very hard to follow the threads on a list. Not so on a BBS.
12. Mentioning offsite mailarchives is out of question imho. No sane person should need to or want to use that.
13. No bold or italic style.
I for one would love to have some kind of messageboard instead of an antique mailingsystem. Both the mailinglist and the talk-pages are so cumbersome, there should be an EASY way to discuss!
BBS:es are not perfect either, if anyone remembers Fidonet it had an ultimate messageing system but it not an option. They have their flaws but it is the best alternative. And usually; Mailinglist = intelligent, low traffic BBS = dumb, high traffic and thats also something to consider. I think its the way of the future.
Björn Lindqvist
Björn-
Why I prefer BBS:es:
- Discussion is closer to content because both are webbased.
Define "closer"- an "Alt+Tab" gets me to my email client, a "Ctrl+Tab" gets me to another browser window. If you use a suite like Mozilla mail and web are integrated. You yourself mentioned webmail -- if you want to use that, you're free to do so. Ironically, the interface arguments against webmail are also applicable to BBS.
- Threads can be followed more easily. There is no way that a
mailprogam can figure out in which thread this reply belongs to for example because I use digest mode.
Sure, but you'd never have something equivalent to digest mode in the first place when using a BBS :-). Besides, even if you reply to a digest, you should always use the proper subject line -- MIME digests make this easy, and may also preserve message references (not sure).
- I can edit my post after it has been written, if that feature is
desireable. This also means that post publishing moderation will be easier which is preferable to prepublishing that a mailinglist requires.
If you want editable comments, use a wiki. Whether post-moderation is preferable to pre-moderation is debatable, I for one think the exact opposite is the case: Pre-moderation reduces the amount of unnecessary content members are exposed to, and also the amount of public discussion about the moderation.
- How does this look?:
[crapquote snipped]
Highly nested quotes always get ugly, no matter which quoting system you use. Yes, many mail clients unfortunately do not follow standards, esp. MS Outlook. But you get the same phenomenon with BBS: Users will quote in different styles, some using the built in quoting mechanism, others quoting manually, others not at all. Mix those and it gets ugly -- I've seen it.
- From time to time there comes someone who replies to the whole digest
without deleting anything.
Users acting stupidly is a problem you will have with any system. If you want to avoid digest-associated nuisances, disable digest delivery.
- I dont have to read "Do you have Yahoo?" 2,000,000 times.
Ignore it, or write a filter. It's just plaintext -- I could care less. Those annoying Flash banners on some bulletin boards, on the other hand ..
- Many users use the Internet at work or school where they dont have
access to mail only to the web.
If you have access to the web, you have access to mail. If you have access to the machine, you have access to an email client.
- Using webmail like Hotmail is not fun to read mailinglists on. Your
mailbox fills up with spam instantly
Depends on the freemail provider used. I have used GMX for ages without getting spam. My regular home mail account on the other hand is full of spam. But there are filters for these things, whereas a BBS hardly provides any filtering options.
and the interfaces are usually very cumbersome.
See above -- don't want a web interface? Don't use it.
- Because I can write down all the e-mailadresses i get from the list
and spam you with penis-enlargements. Bush could easily track all Afgan terrorists on this list down if he wanted to - would be much harder on a BBS.
Spam is a real problem, I will give you that. Fortunately, filters like spamassassin are getting better, and most mailing list archives now hide email addresses to prevent harvesting. Harvesting by spam-subscribers might happen in the future, though.
- I have to wait a day for new letters to arrive because I use digest
mode and if I dont my mailbox will get clogged.
"Get clogged"? POP3 mailboxes are limited by space, not by # of messages. Use filters, file to folders. Two clicks in a decent mail client.
- When many topics is discussed simultaneously it becomes very hard to
follow the threads on a list. Not so on a BBS.
Again, use your mail client properly. If you like to have all messages in a digest with no sorting or threading, then that's your choice.
- Mentioning offsite mailarchives is out of question imho. No sane
person should need to or want to use that.
Huh?!
- No bold or italic style.
*Are* you _sure_? Lack of "advanced" formatting tends to be an advantage for high signal discussions. Check out the few messages that actually use HTML and you see what I mean. I refer you to my comment regarding animated smileys with beer kegs on bulletin boards.
I for one would love to have some kind of messageboard instead of an antique mailingsystem. Both the mailinglist and the talk-pages are so cumbersome, there should be an EASY way to discuss!
Learn to use the technology you own, and you may find that it is much more advanced than you think. Email has evolved over the last decades.
And usually; Mailinglist = intelligent, low traffic BBS = dumb, high traffic and thats also something to consider. I think its the way of the future.
You think that "dumb, high traffic" is the way of the future? I think I'll pass.
Regards,
Erik
Björn Lindqvist wrote:
Why I prefer BBS:es:
- Discussion is closer to content because both are webbased.
Oh, ****. I still hate it to search some hours to get a overview of all disscussed subjects inside Wikipeda with this stupid Discussion/Talk pages.
Mails are coming full automaticly on my system at home, are sorted into IMAP Folders and the next new message is at keystroke distance (mostly ''delete'' or 'Next Message''. An I don't have to wait for a webserver to serve a page. I bet pressing a key to get the next message from your local mailfolder is 1000 times faster than any BBS System.
Diskusstion don't have to be close to the content. A little bit of distance helps to write proper messages.
The rest Erik has still written enought about. BBS are no proper (fast) way to discuss. If you are subscribed to 20 Mailinglists, no problem to get this managed. 20 BBS meens 20 Browser tabs, a lot of traffic (reloads to check it somethings happend), instead the easy message drops of mailinglist.
I can say that I stopped every participation at projects switched to BBS (webbased).
Smurf
Well, not to be too me-centric, but I know that if there's a BBS I will look at it sometimes, out of a sense of responsibility for the project, but I'm not likely to "live" there in the same way that I "live" on the mailing list, if you see what I mean.
So if important policy discussions were to take place there, I'd miss them all completely.
Perhaps what we need is just a better interface for the mailing list archives, and some means for people to post to the mailing list from the web? What are the main features that the pro-BBS'ers want?
Just as I don't care if other people read email using Microsoft Outlook instead of a civilized mail program ;-), I don't care if some people want to read and participate on the mailing list in some BBS-centric fashion.
As long as I can live my life in emacs, I'm happy.
--Jimbo
On 5/7/03 7:33 AM, "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com wrote:
Well, not to be too me-centric, but I know that if there's a BBS I will look at it sometimes, out of a sense of responsibility for the project, but I'm not likely to "live" there in the same way that I "live" on the mailing list, if you see what I mean.
So if important policy discussions were to take place there, I'd miss them all completely.
Perhaps what we need is just a better interface for the mailing list archives, and some means for people to post to the mailing list from the web? What are the main features that the pro-BBS'ers want?
1. No need to subscribe/log in a second time. 2. Ability to use wiki markup in posts. 3. Better archives.
The Cunctator wrote:
- No need to subscribe/log in a second time.
In order to contribute, I guess you mean? So, one thing that might satisfy this would be a simple program to allow signed-in users to fill in a form and have the result sent to the mailing list.
- Ability to use wiki markup in posts.
Most particularly, you want to be able to click on [[Thomas Jefferson]], right, and have it do the sensible thing. Parsing code for that should be easy enough.
- Better archives.
Better in what ways?
My thinking *at the moment* is that a significant portion of the functionality you want could be quickly added by an energetic perl or python programmer to the mailing list software. All that's needed is (1) a form for logged-in-users to be able to post to the list, and that's a very simple perl script and (2) a perl script or python code or php to process the logs into a more wiki-clickable format.
Adding such things seems pretty simple, because if done thoughtfully, it wouldn't interfere with anything else on the site, and it would add the things you want without forcing email partisans to change our ways, either.
(I mean, especially for [[Thomas Jefferson]], we do that already.)
--Jimbo
Im sure by this point that no one saw one of my messages yesterday, one of the downfalls of mailing lists (and I do discuss this fact in that message).
See: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media
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Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
- Better archives.
Better in what ways?
Searchable.
Axel
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On Wed, 2003-05-07 at 14:46, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Axel Boldt wrote:
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
- Better archives.
Better in what ways?
Searchable.
That's good. What else?
Easily referenceable.
Accessible in the same medium as most recent posts.
The Cunctator wrote, clarifying the meaning of 'better archives':
Easily referenceable.
Accessible in the same medium as most recent posts.
I'm not sure what these mean. By "easily referencable", do you mean something like "a stable url that's easy to cut and paste when writing"? And presumably the url should be clickable in the archives.
By "accessible in the same medium as most recent posts", what do you mean?
I know people who subscribe to mailman mailing lists, then set themselves to 'nomail' and read the mailing list on the web. I think posts appear in the archives as quickly -- or quicker -- than they appear in people's inboxes. Is that all you meant here?
The reason I'm asking all these questions is in an attempt to find out if there's an easy way to provide a tidbit of extra functionality to our existing mailing list software so as to make BBS-supporters happy.
(Obviously, the BBS-supporters have no reason to want email fans such as myself to have to change my habits.)
--Jimbo
Easily referenceable.
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-May/010061.html
Took me 5 seconds.
Accessible in the same medium as most recent posts.
No, I didn't have to print it.
Regards,
Erik
On Wed, 7 May 2003 11:46:37 -0700, Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com gave utterance to the following:
Axel Boldt wrote:
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
- Better archives.
Better in what ways?
Searchable.
That's good. What else?
Its not a push medium: you can take it or leave it. With the ML it is all or nothing - you have to go through the mail, wait, confirm process each time you want to go on or off a list.
While talk pages are also non-push, I think they are very ill-suited to discussions where threads are more than one or two levels deep - and unless you check the history you don't know if anyone has been edited.
Richard Grevers wrote:
Its not a push medium: you can take it or leave it. With the ML it is all or nothing - you have to go through the mail, wait, confirm process each time you want to go on or off a list.
Oh, but I can help you! Here's what I recommend:
Subscribe Set yourself to nomail Read the archives via the web as you see fit Post to the list via email as you see fit
In that way, you don't have to subscribe/unsubscribe just to post something.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
- Better archives.
Better in what ways?
Searchable.
wget http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l.mbox/wikipedia-l.mbox grep "Axel Boldt" wikipedia-l.mbox
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
wget http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l.mbox/wikipedia-l.mbox grep "Axel Boldt" wikipedia-l.mbox
While this is cute, I suppose we must concede that it may not be all that helpful for newbies and non-Unix folks.
It would be pretty simple for me to write a quick perl/DBFile search engine for the mailing list archives. It wouldn't suck all that much, and it could be linked on the archives themselves, I suppose.
--Jimbo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
wget
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l.mbox/wikipedia-l.mbox
grep "Axel Boldt" wikipedia-l.mbox
While this is cute, I suppose we must concede that it may not be all that helpful for newbies and non-Unix folks.
It turns out that gmane has a nice searchable web interface to our mailing lists: http://news.gmane.org/thread.php?group=gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.m...
Axel
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Jimmy Wales wrote:
Well, not to be too me-centric, but I know that if there's a BBS I will look at it sometimes, out of a sense of responsibility for the project, but I'm not likely to "live" there in the same way that I "live" on the mailing list, if you see what I mean.
So if important policy discussions were to take place there, I'd miss them all completely.
When our lives are busy most of us do the same thing. It already takes a fair chunk of time to go through what comes in on the mailing list. I have instant opinions on a lot of them but no time to respond fairly. Last summer Larry had sent out a few thought provoking comments, but responding to that type of thing requires careful consideration, so I stick them on the "to do" stack. They're still there, but many more things have been pushed onto the stack since then. By the time I get to them they will be so dated as to be meaningless to everybody else. On the other hand the innumerable comments about the new fashions that Lir is wearing in the police line-up don't last very long.
Where we put things on the spectrum is a measure of importance to us. Active mailing list participation is a symptom of acute Wikipediholism, but even the most addicted among us would balk at the idea of receiving a separate eMail for every Recent Change that appears on the 'pedia :-( .
I belong to a few other mailing lists, but I've demoted them to digest format. I skim rapidly though them for anything really interesting, but mostly I just delete.
Puting things on a BBS would be a further demotion, because I would only look at them when I had a lot of time. 50 messages a day = 1,500 messages a month. Yes a lot of lot of time! ... and this is a list where spam appears only rarely.
Ec
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote in news:20030507043336.D22848@joey.bomis.com:
[cut]
Perhaps what we need is just a better interface for the mailing list archives, and some means for people to post to the mailing list from the web?
[cut]
Now there the mailing lists. Also all postings are send to the gmane.org news server. So you read & post all messages like it where a usenet group if you like that.
Is a web-to-usenet interfase not to the most easy option to provide webbased reading and posting acces to the lists ?
Giskart
Now i've been ignored 2x in a row, and no one is even *capable* of knowing about it.
Namely, # [Wikipedia-l] use of a bot (long) Erik Moeller HERE # [Wikipedia-l] Re: use of a bot (long). Hunter Peress # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Bj=F6rn_Lindqvist?= # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es Erik Moeller # [Wikipedia-l] use of a bot (long) The Cunctator # [Wikipedia-l] Re: use of a bot (long). Erik Moeller # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es Thomas Corell # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es Jimmy Wales # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es Anthere # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es The Cunctator # [Wikipedia-l] use of a bot (long) Tomos at Wikipedia # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es Jimmy Wales HERE # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es (see http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media) Hunter Peress # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es Ray Saintonge # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es Axel Boldt # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es Jimmy Wales # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es The Cunctator # [Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es Jimmy Wales # [Wikipedia-l] Re: I like BBS:es Giskart
Over the last 24 hours. I happen to be one of those people that only read this list over its web interface.
Its also crazy that lots of the dicussion that took place after my second "HERE" email (which was just a repeat of the first) could have benefitted from what I said 24 hours ago, where in a good threading system like slashdot's where you know if there have been replies or not. Where you *can* change the title of your repsonse while not worrying about its placement in the thread.
So see: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media
Which has been up for nearly a day now.
--- Giskart giskart@wikipedia.be wrote:
Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote in news:20030507043336.D22848@joey.bomis.com:
[cut]
Perhaps what we need is just a better interface for the mailing list archives, and some means for people to post to the mailing list from the web?
[cut]
Now there the mailing lists. Also all postings are send to the gmane.org news server. So you read & post all messages like it where a usenet group if you like that.
Is a web-to-usenet interfase not to the most easy option to provide webbased reading and posting acces to the lists ?
Giskart
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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Hunter-
Now i've been ignored 2x in a row, and no one is even *capable* of knowing about it.
I've ignored your reference because I checked the meta page and saw nothing interesting or new there. I see no reason to discuss the same issue in two different places at the same time. As I said, if you want to improve talk pages, send us the code. IMO, use of a bulletin board is out of the question.
Regards,
Erik
(Hunter Peress hfastjava@yahoo.com): Now i've been ignored 2x in a row, and no one is even *capable* of knowing about it.
Jesus, get over yourself. Your messages came through just fine, and I and others read them. We just didn't reply because we didn't feel like it. If you think you have something important to say, just say it. If we ignore you again, then it's probably because /we/ didn't think it was that important.
--- Lee Daniel Crocker lee@piclab.com wrote:
(Hunter Peress hfastjava@yahoo.com): Now i've been ignored 2x in a row, and no one is even *capable* of knowing about it.
Jesus, get over yourself. Your messages came through just fine, and I and others read them. We just didn't reply because we didn't feel like it. If you think you have something important to say, just say it. If we ignore you again, then it's probably because /we/ didn't think it was that important.
My point was for it to be less about me, and more about my ideas that have yet to be addressed.
This response Lee just provided, shows two of my points that I have enumerated on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media :
That list based emails encourage the author to make each email stand on its own , which Lee demonstrated by actually choosing not to re-include the important information, but only enough to mount a small point of personal criticism.
AND
That people have no idea what has been addressed by Lee's email by just looking at the list of emails because of another point on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media (and which I also stated in the previous email, but was also not reincluded) OR to whom it was addressed as changing the title on a non-threaded system causes havoc.
Namely: "where in a good threading system like slashdot's where you know if there have been replies or not. Where you *can* change the title of your repsonse while not worrying about its placement in the thread."
-- Lee Daniel Crocker lee@piclab.com http://www.piclab.com/lee/ "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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"Hunter Peress" skribis:
That people have no idea what has been addressed by Lee's email by just looking at the list of emails because of another point on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media (and which I also stated in the previous email, but was also not reincluded) OR to whom it was addressed as changing the title on a non-threaded system causes havoc.
Namely: "where in a good threading system like slashdot's where you know if there have been replies or not. Where you *can* change the title of your repsonse while not worrying about its placement in the thread."
I do not know how it looks like in the web-interface, but my mailreader shows the messages threaded, independant of the subject line.
(This sometimes causes trouble when people want to start an new thread by simply responding a message and changing the title.)
When you write your bbs-mail-interface, please continue to use the References:-Mechanism.
Paul
--- Lee Daniel Crocker lee@piclab.com wrote:
(Hunter Peress hfastjava@yahoo.com): Now i've been ignored 2x in a row, and no one is
even *capable*
of knowing about it.
Oy Hunter. Do not be so unhappy about that. This is quite frequent messages are left unanswered.
Fortunately, or, we would drown under messages :-))
Besides, do not think a message not commented is necessarily a proof others are ignoring you or that your message did not go through. You may check the archives if you have doubts. And on meta, I think the page counter is not disabled. You can see some read your page.
But do not necessarily expect an acknowledgment. Some don't care, some may find nothing new, and some silently agree, but have nothing to add. Some disagree but think it a minor issue. Nothing personnal here. Don't worry :-)
Cheers Ant
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Hunter Peress wrote:
Now i've been ignored 2x in a row, and no one is even *capable* of knowing about it.
Are you sure? I mean, I know about it, right?
I read your Talk_media page, but I'm not sure what to make of it.
Your point about the superior threading abilities of a slashdot-style bbs system is a good one. It's a good point, no doubt.
But it doesn't strike me as a sufficient reason to abandon email entirely.
What I'm thinking about and proposing is that we address whatever problems people are having with the current mailing list setup in a way that isn't going to force those of us who like the status quo just fine to try to do something radically different.
And just opening up a BBS and telling people to use it if they like isn't likely to be very successful -- it would just fracture the existing discussions unnecessarily. Better to add some BBS-features somehow, for example via a Mailman-to-Usenet or Mailman-to-BBS gateway system.
Some people -- and count me among them -- aren't even *close* to wanting to change our ways.
--Jimbo
Jimmy just made 4 replies in a row to the list. A process that makes difficult to reply to them all. mailinglist--
An email-bbs bridge is absolutely the best of both worlds. You get structure of a threaded system + emailability for conservatives.
OTOH, a bit lighter is to hack up the web view of the mailman a little, I suggest something to address this in http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media Under: Corollary issues (see google groups example).
Jimmy: Please dont write perl, as this is a common feature in mailman. see: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.011.htp
OR see a live example from some friends of mine: http://www.scipy.org/site_content/MailList
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
Hunter Peress wrote:
Now i've been ignored 2x in a row, and no one is even *capable* of knowing about it.
Are you sure? I mean, I know about it, right?
I read your Talk_media page, but I'm not sure what to make of it.
Your point about the superior threading abilities of a slashdot-style bbs system is a good one. It's a good point, no doubt.
But it doesn't strike me as a sufficient reason to abandon email entirely.
What I'm thinking about and proposing is that we address whatever problems people are having with the current mailing list setup in a way that isn't going to force those of us who like the status quo just fine to try to do something radically different.
And just opening up a BBS and telling people to use it if they like isn't likely to be very successful -- it would just fracture the existing discussions unnecessarily. Better to add some BBS-features somehow, for example via a Mailman-to-Usenet or Mailman-to-BBS gateway system.
Some people -- and count me among them -- aren't even *close* to wanting to change our ways.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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Hunter-
An email-bbs bridge is absolutely the best of both worlds. You get structure of a threaded system + emailability for conservatives.
There is already a fairly convenient web interface for *reading* the mailing list at gmane.org. However, we need to have some protection against posting to it from a web interface, so as not to be drowned by spam. If we want to provide such a gateway, it has to use the same or a similar authentication procedure as the mailing list -- just being authenticated by your Wikipedia account would not suffice, because the Wikipedia account itself is not authenticated.
If you wish to provide, or are familiar with a web interface that allows *posting* to a mailman-based lists with authentication, then yes, that would be an option.
Regards,
Erik
Great. I'll get to work right away on researching to see if there are options already out there, and if not, begin a hacking strategy.
The two paths to take right now are: --hack in (of find some patches for) to mailman some better functionality for the webbased view. (see examples at the zesty or google groups link provided on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media)
OR --hack in full and secure email responding into an already existing bbs like phpbb (which already supports email notification per topic AND which I am already comfortable with, as I've shown this list a patch that I made for it see phpbb-hpmods.sf.net)
As I have requested many times now, could I please be granted an admin account so I can start this work in a most transparent way. I have already shown that I've been a member of wikipedia for 3/4's of a year now, and have been on the most active list throughout that time).
AND btw, just for redudancy purposes, here is a link to a response I provided to BRION on the tech list to a discussion that popped up there concurrently to this one: http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-May/003699.html
FINALLY, we have to address tomos i18n concerns as this is how this whole thread got started.
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Hunter-
An email-bbs bridge is absolutely the best of both worlds. You get structure of a threaded system + emailability for conservatives.
There is already a fairly convenient web interface for *reading* the mailing list at gmane.org. However, we need to have some protection against posting to it from a web interface, so as not to be drowned by spam. If we want to provide such a gateway, it has to use the same or a similar authentication procedure as the mailing list -- just being authenticated by your Wikipedia account would not suffice, because the Wikipedia account itself is not authenticated.
If you wish to provide, or are familiar with a web interface that allows *posting* to a mailman-based lists with authentication, then yes, that would be an option.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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Hunter-
OR --hack in full and secure email responding into an already existing bbs like phpbb (which already supports email notification per topic AND which I am already comfortable with, as I've shown this list a patch that I made for it see phpbb-hpmods.sf.net)
The complexity of mailman/PHPBB interaction seems too high, and so would be the replication of the entire mailman functionality in PHPBB. Keep in mind that comments should only be plaintext, quotes need to be done email style (">foo"), linebreaks should be inserted automatically, message references need to be retained, messages sent to the mailing list need to appear in the PHPBB etc.
I suggest taking a look at ways to improve the mailman web interface to allow members to post through it. I have not seen posting functionality at the Scipy example site you linked to, but it did have search functionality -- perhaps you could send the patches for that to wikitech-l and ask for the functionality to be added to our installed mailman package.
As I have requested many times now, could I please be granted an admin account so I can start this work in a most transparent way.
Please be specific in what kind of access you want. A shell account on the Wikipedia server? Why? If you patch mailman to support the above, it would be perfectly reasonable to do so by sending a patch. I don't have a shell account either and have never needed one.
Regards,
Erik
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Hunter-
OR --hack in full and secure email responding into an already existing bbs like phpbb (which already supports email notification per topic AND which I am already comfortable with, as I've shown this list a patch that I made for it see phpbb-hpmods.sf.net)
The complexity of mailman/PHPBB interaction seems too high, and so would be the replication of the entire mailman functionality in PHPBB. Keep in mind that comments should only be plaintext, quotes need to be done email style (">foo"), linebreaks should be inserted automatically, message references need to be retained, messages sent to the mailing list need to appear in the PHPBB etc.
Nono, when i said:
The two paths to take right now are: --hack in (of find some patches for) to mailman some better functionality for the webbased
view.
(see examples at the zesty or google groups link provided on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_media)
OR --hack in full and secure email responding into an already existing bbs like phpbb (which already supports email notification per topic AND which I am already comfortable with, as I've shown this list a patch that I made for it see phpbb-hpmods.sf.net)
Each of those steps would be to make one act more like other. This implies developing one of the paths to the point where an acceptable system is achieved. As I have shown, there are no worries to be had about this potentially precarious process as I have already hacked through phpbb, and I am a pythoneer, thus am very comfortable with the internals of mailman.
I suggest taking a look at ways to improve the mailman web interface to allow members to post through it. I have not seen posting functionality at the Scipy example site you linked to, but it did have search functionality -- perhaps you could send the patches for that to wikitech-l and ask for the functionality to be added to our installed mailman package.
Noted
As I have requested many times now, could I please be granted an admin account so I can start this work in a most transparent way.
Please be specific in what kind of access you want. A shell account on the Wikipedia server? Why? If you patch mailman to support the above, it would be perfectly reasonable to do so by sending a patch. I don't have a shell account either and have never needed one.
I have already presented why:specifically to conduct my research and development on the wikipedia machine in a completely open fashion. I have monitered the lists here over time, and there has even been a thread about granting everyone on wikipedia shell access. Were this idea fact by this point, I would have had a shell account 7 months ago.
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Hunter-
Each of those steps would be to make one act more like other. This implies developing one of the paths to the point where an acceptable system is achieved. As I have shown, there are no worries to be had about this potentially precarious process as I have already hacked through phpbb, and I am a pythoneer, thus am very comfortable with the internals of mailman.
That's fine. Just keep in mind that the mailing list functionality needs to continue to operate as it does now.
I have already presented why:specifically to conduct my research and development on the wikipedia machine in a completely open fashion. I have monitered the lists here over time, and there has even been a thread about granting everyone on wikipedia shell access. Were this idea fact by this point, I would have had a shell account 7 months ago.
Wikipedia is not a shell account provider. If you beg long enough, you will probably get access, but you have to understand that this is a significantly bigger issue than sysop access. I would not be surprised if shell users could read LocalSettings.php and read the database server access settings, for example.
There's nothing stopping you from going to
http://sourceforge.net/ http://developer.berlios.de/ http://savannah.gnu.org/
and setting up a new project for whatever you're trying to do. These all provide free hosting and CVS for open source projects. BerliOS also provides a MySQL database. So you can develop all the code openly if you want to. You can install mailman locally and use the Wikipedia archives for experimenting. I really don't see why you would need shell access to accomplish anything you are trying to accomplish.
Regards,
Erik
Tomos, obviously, the most immediate solution is to try to address things in a conservative way. The changes that I have discussed on this board will take months (probably) to implement and test.
Anyway, your issue is a smaller one, and I am chatting with the mailman developers right now on :
irc.freenode.net #mailman
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Hunter-
Each of those steps would be to make one act more like other. This implies developing one of the paths to the point where an acceptable system is achieved. As I have shown, there are no worries to be had about this potentially precarious process as I have already hacked through phpbb, and I am a pythoneer, thus am very comfortable with the internals of mailman.
That's fine. Just keep in mind that the mailing list functionality needs to continue to operate as it does now.
I have already presented why:specifically to conduct my research and development on the wikipedia machine in a completely open fashion. I have monitered the lists here over time, and there has even been a thread about granting everyone on wikipedia shell access. Were this idea fact by this point, I would have had a shell account 7 months ago.
Wikipedia is not a shell account provider. If you beg long enough, you will probably get access, but you have to understand that this is a significantly bigger issue than sysop access. I would not be surprised if shell users could read LocalSettings.php and read the database server access settings, for example.
There's nothing stopping you from going to
http://sourceforge.net/ http://developer.berlios.de/ http://savannah.gnu.org/
and setting up a new project for whatever you're trying to do. These all provide free hosting and CVS for open source projects. BerliOS also provides a MySQL database. So you can develop all the code openly if you want to. You can install mailman locally and use the Wikipedia archives for experimenting. I really don't see why you would need shell access to accomplish anything you are trying to accomplish.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com
Tomos, obviously, the most immediate solution is to try to address things in a conservative way. The changes that I have discussed on this board will take months (probably) to implement and test.
Anyway, your issue is a smaller one, and I am chatting with the mailman developers right now on :
irc.freenode.net #mailman
WHOOPS, here is what i also meant to say:
Could you show us (via png) a mailman page where the japanese is dealt with poorly, and then could you be so kind as to show us what it should look like?
And finally. could you provide *any* insight as to what might be causing this problem inside mailman (even a wild guess is better than nothing). If you want to help hack through this issue come to #mailman and #wikipedia, i am known as skimpIzu on both. If i am not there, please wait around for as long as it takes for me to be there, i online everyday.
--- Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
Hunter-
Each of those steps would be to make one act more like other. This implies developing one of the paths to the point where an acceptable system is achieved. As I have shown, there are no worries to be had about this potentially precarious process as I have already hacked through phpbb, and I am a pythoneer, thus am very comfortable with the internals of mailman.
That's fine. Just keep in mind that the mailing list functionality needs to continue to operate as it does now.
I have already presented why:specifically to conduct my research and development on the wikipedia machine in a completely open fashion. I have monitered the lists here over time, and there has even been a thread about granting everyone on wikipedia shell access. Were this idea fact by this point, I would have had a shell account 7 months ago.
Wikipedia is not a shell account provider. If you beg long enough, you will probably get access, but you have to understand that this is a significantly bigger issue than sysop access. I would not be surprised if shell users could read LocalSettings.php and read the database server access settings, for example.
There's nothing stopping you from going to
http://sourceforge.net/ http://developer.berlios.de/ http://savannah.gnu.org/
and setting up a new project for whatever you're trying to do. These all provide free hosting and CVS for open source projects. BerliOS also provides a MySQL database. So you can develop all the code openly if you want to. You can install mailman locally and use the Wikipedia archives for experimenting. I really don't see why you would need shell access to accomplish anything you are trying to accomplish.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com
Hunter Peress wrote:
there has even been a thread about granting everyone on wikipedia shell access. Were this idea fact by this point, I would have had a shell account 7 months ago.
Wow, I must have missed that thread, but basically I don't think that would be a good idea. I don't mind us being pretty open with shell accounts for anyone who needs them, developers, but "internal" security, security for users from the command line, is something I'd rather not worry about too much.
--Jimbo
Erik Moeller wrote:
If we want to provide such a gateway, it has to use the same or a similar authentication procedure as the mailing list -- just being authenticated by your Wikipedia account would not suffice, because the Wikipedia account itself is not authenticated.
I'm not sure I follow you here. What authentication is necessary?
We do have the option of "posts only by subscribers" turned on, but that's solely to prevent spamming, as far as I know. What additional reasons for authentication might there be?
It seems unlikely to me that spammers would bother to abuse a web-posting interface. It would be a lot of work, and the one thing spammers like to avoid is work.
--Jimbo
Jimbo-
It seems unlikely to me that spammers would bother to abuse a web-posting interface. It would be a lot of work, and the one thing spammers like to avoid is work.
Perhaps. But have you ever heard the term "crapflooder"? There are other problems besides spammers, and I often use the term spam to refer to them as well. On my weblog, infoAnarchy, I regularly have to deal with people who think it's fun to post hundreds of nonsense comments. The same is possible on a BBS. It's not a big deal usually because you can delete the stuff. But you don't want it to be sent out to users on the mailing list first.
You're spoiled by wiki. Everything is easy to fix on wiki. But crapflooding of a mailing list by some banned asshole would be very annoying. The mailing list confirmation is at least some barrier to entry, where you can deny access to individuals easily or simply limit new signups in emergencies, and an equivalent barrier should exist for a BBS->list interface.
Regards,
Erik
--- Thomas Corell T.Corell@t-online.de wrote:
Bj�rn Lindqvist wrote:
Why I prefer BBS:es:
- Discussion is closer to content because both
are webbased.
Oh, ****. I still hate it to search some hours to get a overview of all disscussed subjects inside Wikipeda with this stupid Discussion/Talk pages.
Mails are coming full automaticly on my system at home, are sorted into IMAP Folders and the next new message is at keystroke distance (mostly ''delete'' or 'Next Message''. An I don't have to wait for a webserver to serve a page. I bet pressing a key to get the next message from your local mailfolder is 1000 times faster than any BBS System.
If this is *so* *quick* and *easy* to press the "next" or "delete" key, perhaps would it be nice to show a little more tolerance toward those who feel more confortable dealing with some difficult topics in their native language, rather than english language.
Everyone has a right to be part of the big picture in Wikipedia. That might means sometimes switching to another language for more convenience.
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