[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum

[Andrew Coppin]

John Meacham wrote:
> There already is an NNTP <-> mailing list gateway via gmane that gives a
> nice forumy and threaded web interface for those with insufficient email
> readers. Adding a completely different interface seems unnecessary and
> fragmentary.
>   

Trouble is, you can't use it like just another NNTP server.

If you have a forum powered by NNTP, you can casually throw in a "hey, 
nice one" time comment as a reply to part of a thread, and only people 
interested in that thread have to see your message (or download it, for 
that matter). If you do that on a mailing list, all 700+ subscribers get 
a copy of your email. And, usually, they're not very amused about it. 
With SMTP, you can only really say something if it's really, really 
worth saying. Otherwise it just gets too noisy. That's the trouble with 
a mailing list; it's everyone talking to everyone. NNTP has real 
threading, and a central place where all the messages can be 
redownloaded from incrimentally, and it doesn't get eaten by your ISP's 
spam filter, and and and...

Still, I know from experience that I am the only person here who 
appreciates these virtues. Everybody else seems quite happy with a crude 
SMTP system, so...