Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[David W Noon]

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On Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:10:03 +0200, Peter Humphrey wrote about Re:
[gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant:

>On Tuesday 07 September 2010 01:36:28 David W Noon wrote:
>
>> Moreover, keeping this as a subscription-only mailing list keeps the
>> spam count down.
>
>An equally important factor is prohibiting subscriptions from 
>dynamically allocated IP addresses. This has caused me to spend money
>on a fixed address.

I post to this newsgroup using a DHCP address assigned by my ISP.  My
SMTP server connects directly to the Gentoo mailing list server.  The
filtering for this mailing list is done entirely on the email address
in the From: header, and IP address is ignored.

However, I do get connection refusals from some other SMTP servers.
Since I am a cheapskate, I simply re-route such messages through my
ISP's SMTP server; it adds up to an hour to the turn-around time, but
it is free.  I simply put the email address or domain name
into /etc/postfix/transport and run:
   postmap transport
   postfix reload
-- 
Regards,

Dave  [RLU #314465]
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
dwnoon@ntlworld.com (David W Noon)
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Gregory Shearman]

In linux.gentoo.user, you wrote:
>> I'm reading your message via a usenet server. linux.gentoo.user is the
>> newsgroup. Replies of course go via the mailing list address.
>
> Is that seamless? Can you directly reply to a posting? Easy to set up? How?

More or less. Instead of press "f" to reply in slrn I press "r" and slrn
starts up Mutt and my favourite text editor.

-- 
Regards,

Gregory.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 08 September 2010 02:27:16 Gregory Shearman wrote:
> In linux.gentoo.user, you wrote:
> >> I'm reading your message via a usenet server. linux.gentoo.user is the
> >> newsgroup. Replies of course go via the mailing list address.
> > 
> > Is that seamless? Can you directly reply to a posting? Easy to set up?
> > How?
> 
> More or less. Instead of press "f" to reply in slrn I press "r" and slrn
> starts up Mutt and my favourite text editor.

Which seems more logical to me.
"R" for "Reply"
What does the "F" stand for, if not for "Forward"?

--
Joost

[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-09-08, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
> On Wednesday 08 September 2010 02:27:16 Gregory Shearman wrote:
>> In linux.gentoo.user, you wrote:
>> >> I'm reading your message via a usenet server. linux.gentoo.user is the
>> >> newsgroup. Replies of course go via the mailing list address.
>> > 
>> > Is that seamless? Can you directly reply to a posting? Easy to set up?
>> > How?
>> 
>> More or less. Instead of press "f" to reply in slrn I press "r" and slrn
>> starts up Mutt and my favourite text editor.
>
> Which seems more logical to me.
> "R" for "Reply"
> What does the "F" stand for, if not for "Forward"?

Followup.  In traditional news parlance, one doesn't reply to a
news posting, one posts a followup article.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! He is the MELBA-BEING
                                  at               ... the ANGEL CAKE
                              gmail.com            ... XEROX him ... XEROX
                                                   him --

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[David W Noon]

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On Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:10:02 +0200, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote about
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant:

>Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>> > wtf are you talking about?
>> >
>> > and who is using news anyway?
>> >
>> >
>> >    
>> 
>> I was trying to figure this out myself.  I thought maybe I was
>> missing something in the message.  Maybe not.
>Isn't the list aggregated into that news site gmain or whatever its
>called?
>Then he can have it as a newsgroup.

I read this list through Usenet as a newsgroup.  However, I post my
follow-ups, such as this one, using email to the mailing list.

It's no big deal.

Moreover, keeping this as a subscription-only mailing list keeps the
spam count down.
-- 
Regards,

Dave  [RLU #314465]
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
dwnoon@ntlworld.com (David W Noon)
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Peter Humphrey]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010 01:36:28 David W Noon wrote:

> Moreover, keeping this as a subscription-only mailing list keeps the
> spam count down.

An equally important factor is prohibiting subscriptions from 
dynamically allocated IP addresses. This has caused me to spend money on 
a fixed address.

-- 
Rgds
Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Peter Humphrey <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org>wrote:

> On Tuesday 07 September 2010 01:36:28 David W Noon wrote:
>
> > Moreover, keeping this as a subscription-only mailing list keeps the
> > spam count down.
>
> An equally important factor is prohibiting subscriptions from
> dynamically allocated IP addresses. This has caused me to spend money on
> a fixed address.
>
> --
> Rgds
> Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.
>
> Really?  I pay because I have a use for a fixed IP, but if the above is
your only
reason, there are free email accounts to be had that can forward to wherever
you
like.  I yet another gmail account like that for some specific sensitive
traffic that I
want semi-anonymous.  I'm sure there are other free accounts that can do the
same.

Save your money for the things you really need.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Gregory Shearman]

In linux.gentoo.user, you wrote:
> On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
>> >> I was trying to figure this out myself.  I thought maybe I was missing
>> >> something in the message.  Maybe not.
>> > 
>> > Isn't the list aggregated into that news site gmain or whatever its
>> > called?
>> > Then he can have it as a newsgroup.
>> 
>> It's not the question how I read it, but a question how a majority of
>> users can read and write to it. That influences the culture and
>> athmosphere of communication.  Also I think Volkers remark was very
>> ironical else he should best go back to his dishes.
>> 
>> Al
>
> up until today nobody ever mentioned news. Everybody was happy using mailing 
> lists, forums or irc.

I'm reading your message via a usenet server. linux.gentoo.user is the
newsgroup. Replies of course go via the mailing list address.

> Or to phrase it differently: news is dying out quickly and gentoo never missed 
> anything not having a newsgroups.

Usenet is dying because it doesn't attract new users. The old ones are
slowly dying out.

If usenet dies I'll use something else. No problem.

-- 
Regards,

Gregory.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

> I'm reading your message via a usenet server. linux.gentoo.user is the
> newsgroup. Replies of course go via the mailing list address.

Is that seamless? Can you directly reply to a posting? Easy to set up? How?

> Usenet is dying because it doesn't attract new users. The old ones are
> slowly dying out.
>
> If usenet dies I'll use something else. No problem.

That the traditional usenet is dying, isn't surprising. It will be
replaced by sozial networks, which offer far more features for sozial
networking.

But that is something different from having a dedicated news server
for a technological project like news.gentoo.org. However that would
make only sense, if it is fully synchronized with the existing lists.
Else it would lead to an unnecessary split of the userbase.

Al

[gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

Hi,

being comparingly new to Gentoo I still wounder why the classical
heart of every open source community is missing, a public news server.
At least a news server is not offically announced on
http://www.gentoo.org/ like forums, IRC and mailinglists. (I can read
some, not all of the lists via infosun2.rus.uni-stuttgart.de.)

Well, there are mailinglists. But mailinglists send each message to
everybody producing a lot of traffic overhead. As as result people are
socially driven to reduce the amount of messages. The lists are dead
early while IRC still is active.

By this a lot of interesting solutions are lost to effective web
search. The buzz in IRC doesn't result in a web searchable
documentation. It is rubbish the moment after it was written. Also it
is not everybodies taste only to send small messages and to paste
elsewhere when the stuff exceeds 2 lines of code.

Then there are some Gentoo web forums out there. Now that is really
slow, moving tons of HTML for every single posting. Valuable
information is scattered all around. Do we think intelligent people to
limited to install a Thunderbird to read news, so that people are to
driven to web forums like housewifes, that only know the web as
webpages?

When comparing Gentoo with other communities it has very good
documentation but communication could be better. I am missing the
heart of it.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Monday 06 September 2010, Al wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> being comparingly new to Gentoo I still wounder why the classical
> heart of every open source community is missing, a public news server.
> At least a news server is not offically announced on
> http://www.gentoo.org/ like forums, IRC and mailinglists. (I can read
> some, not all of the lists via infosun2.rus.uni-stuttgart.de.)
> 
> Well, there are mailinglists. But mailinglists send each message to
> everybody producing a lot of traffic overhead. As as result people are
> socially driven to reduce the amount of messages. The lists are dead
> early while IRC still is active.
> 
> By this a lot of interesting solutions are lost to effective web
> search. The buzz in IRC doesn't result in a web searchable
> documentation. It is rubbish the moment after it was written. Also it
> is not everybodies taste only to send small messages and to paste
> elsewhere when the stuff exceeds 2 lines of code.
> 
> Then there are some Gentoo web forums out there. Now that is really
> slow, moving tons of HTML for every single posting. Valuable
> information is scattered all around. Do we think intelligent people to
> limited to install a Thunderbird to read news, so that people are to
> driven to web forums like housewifes, that only know the web as
> webpages?
> 
> When comparing Gentoo with other communities it has very good
> documentation but communication could be better. I am missing the
> heart of it.
> 
> Al

wtf are you talking about?

and who is using news anyway? 

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Dale]

Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> wtf are you talking about?
>
> and who is using news anyway?
>
>
>    

I was trying to figure this out myself.  I thought maybe I was missing 
something in the message.  Maybe not.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[covici]

Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> > wtf are you talking about?
> >
> > and who is using news anyway?
> >
> >
> >    
> 
> I was trying to figure this out myself.  I thought maybe I was missing
> something in the message.  Maybe not.
Isn't the list aggregated into that news site gmain or whatever its
called?
Then he can have it as a newsgroup.

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

>>
>> I was trying to figure this out myself.  I thought maybe I was missing
>> something in the message.  Maybe not.
> Isn't the list aggregated into that news site gmain or whatever its
> called?
> Then he can have it as a newsgroup.
>

It's not the question how I read it, but a question how a majority of
users can read and write to it. That influences the culture and
athmosphere of communication.  Also I think Volkers remark was very
ironical else he should best go back to his dishes.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
> >> I was trying to figure this out myself.  I thought maybe I was missing
> >> something in the message.  Maybe not.
> > 
> > Isn't the list aggregated into that news site gmain or whatever its
> > called?
> > Then he can have it as a newsgroup.
> 
> It's not the question how I read it, but a question how a majority of
> users can read and write to it. That influences the culture and
> athmosphere of communication.  Also I think Volkers remark was very
> ironical else he should best go back to his dishes.
> 
> Al

up until today nobody ever mentioned news. Everybody was happy using mailing 
lists, forums or irc.

Or to phrase it differently: news is dying out quickly and gentoo never missed 
anything not having a newsgroups.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Jake Moe]

 On 07/09/10 06:19, Al wrote:
> Hi,
>
> being comparingly new to Gentoo I still wounder why the classical
> heart of every open source community is missing, a public news server.
> At least a news server is not offically announced on
> http://www.gentoo.org/ like forums, IRC and mailinglists. (I can read
> some, not all of the lists via infosun2.rus.uni-stuttgart.de.)
>
> Well, there are mailinglists. But mailinglists send each message to
> everybody producing a lot of traffic overhead. As as result people are
> socially driven to reduce the amount of messages. The lists are dead
> early while IRC still is active.
>
> By this a lot of interesting solutions are lost to effective web
> search. The buzz in IRC doesn't result in a web searchable
> documentation. It is rubbish the moment after it was written. Also it
> is not everybodies taste only to send small messages and to paste
> elsewhere when the stuff exceeds 2 lines of code.
>
> Then there are some Gentoo web forums out there. Now that is really
> slow, moving tons of HTML for every single posting. Valuable
> information is scattered all around. Do we think intelligent people to
> limited to install a Thunderbird to read news, so that people are to
> driven to web forums like housewifes, that only know the web as
> webpages?
>
> When comparing Gentoo with other communities it has very good
> documentation but communication could be better. I am missing the
> heart of it.
>
> Al
Why say that "lists are dead early"?  This list I find takes a certain
amount of maintenance to keep up-to-date, otherwise it grows to an
unmanageable number of e-mails in my Inbox.  If anything, it's "too
alive" with too much communication, it's nowhere near dead.  That's not
to say I'm complaining about the amount of mail this list generates; I'm
just saying that it's certainly not dead.

Everyone's got their preference; some like mailing lists and come here. 
Others like forums and go there.  Still others prefer IRC.

Also, a quick Google search of "gentoo newsgroup" showed me
alt.os.linux.gentoo, and that it's been posted to as recently as less
than a month ago.  What's wrong with that newsgroup?

And I, for one at least, use Thunderbird to read my e-mail; the
interface is pretty much the same for mail and news.  A little
configuration change and I'd be using news.  But I like the mailing
list, not newsgroups.  (shrug)

Jake Moe

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

On Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:42:40 +1000 Jake Moe <jakesaddress@gmail.com> wrote:

> Everyone's got their preference; some like mailing lists and come here. 
> Others like forums and go there.  Still others prefer IRC.
> 
> Also, a quick Google search of "gentoo newsgroup" showed me
> alt.os.linux.gentoo, and that it's been posted to as recently as less
> than a month ago.  What's wrong with that newsgroup?
> 
> And I, for one at least, use Thunderbird to read my e-mail; the
> interface is pretty much the same for mail and news.  A little
> configuration change and I'd be using news.  But I like the mailing
> list, not newsgroups.  (shrug)

And for those who like newsgroups, gmane is available.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

Jake

it is a pity when well working systems are replaced by systems that
are less good. But the high cultures of the ancient world also have
been replaced by dark medieval times and italien restaurants are
beeing replaced by burger burners (here in Europe).

> Why say that "lists are dead early"?  This list I find takes a certain
> amount of maintenance to keep up-to-date, otherwise it grows to an
> unmanageable number of e-mails in my Inbox.  If anything, it's "too

Well that is the first advantage of a newsreader. It does not spam
your mailbox. You select yourself what you want to read by the header.
The other contents are never delivered to you, eat up neither traffic
nor space. People don't really need to complain of to much traffic.

> alive" with too much communication, it's nowhere near dead.  That's not
> to say I'm complaining about the amount of mail this list generates; I'm
> just saying that it's certainly not dead.

Here people in fact complain about to much mail. Usually you should be
able to anser frankly: "Use a news reader". In a mailinglist you
can't.  Instead here people get made a bad conscience when they are
posting or discussing. That I consider rather contraproductive. That
drives people to IRC with the result of a big loss of living
documentation and a split within the community.

>
> Everyone's got their preference; some like mailing lists and come here.
> Others like forums and go there.  Still others prefer IRC.
>
> Also, a quick Google search of "gentoo newsgroup" showed me
> alt.os.linux.gentoo, and that it's been posted to as recently as less
> than a month ago.  What's wrong with that newsgroup?

1.) It's not even officially anounced on gentoo.org
2.) It is not on a public available gentoo server. I first would need
access to alt.os.linux.gentoo.
3.) It is not synchronized with the mailing list.
4.) The leaders of the community don't support it.

How should it work then? Just because it has gentoo in it's name?

>
> And I, for one at least, use Thunderbird to read my e-mail; the
> interface is pretty much the same for mail and news.  A little
> configuration change and I'd be using news.  But I like the mailing
> list, not newsgroups.  (shrug)

Right for a thunderbird user there is no real difference at all. He is
already "advanced". Probably one should say less retarded.

Saying this I currently write from google web on windows. But the
reason is, that I try to port Gentoo to Cygwin.

I still think a newsserver should be the backbone of a good community.
Mail and forums should be additional doors for those which are brought
up in the world of windows and google. Best they are fully
synchronized and it is the same database.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Jake Moe]

 On 07/09/10 09:55, Al wrote:
> Jake
>
> it is a pity when well working systems are replaced by systems that
> are less good. But the high cultures of the ancient world also have
> been replaced by dark medieval times and italien restaurants are
> beeing replaced by burger burners (here in Europe)
>> Why say that "lists are dead early"?  This list I find takes a certain
>> amount of maintenance to keep up-to-date, otherwise it grows to an
>> unmanageable number of e-mails in my Inbox.  If anything, it's "too
> Well that is the first advantage of a newsreader. It does not spam
> your mailbox. You select yourself what you want to read by the header.
> The other contents are never delivered to you, eat up neither traffic
> nor space. People don't really need to complain of to much traffic.

Well, whether the headers are from an IMAP server or an NNTP server,
they're still headers.  It's my understanding that Thunderbird only
downloads everything in my mail folder because I tell it to.  I could
just as easily not tell it to, and only double-click on the messages
that are interesting to me, and simply delete the rest.  Since I'm
trying to learn as much as possible about Gentoo (I've only been using
Linux about a year or two), I choose to download it all, cause I'm going
to read it all; I learn a lot from things that I don't even intend to use.
>> alive" with too much communication, it's nowhere near dead.  That's not
>> to say I'm complaining about the amount of mail this list generates; I'm
>> just saying that it's certainly not dead.
> Here people in fact complain about to much mail. Usually you should be
> able to anser frankly: "Use a news reader". In a mailinglist you
> can't.  Instead here people get made a bad conscience when they are
> posting or discussing. That I consider rather contraproductive. That
> drives people to IRC with the result of a big loss of living
> documentation and a split within the community.
I'm not sure what you mean by "get made a bad conscience".  Perhaps, you
mean are made to feel bad about posting?  The only times I've seen that
happen are when either a) the OP could have answered him/herself by a
fairly simple Google search (and the reply that says this usually gives
a hint as to what they should be searching for, in case they didn't
think of it themselves, and they are usually followed up by someone
going "Uh duh, why didn't I think of that" or "Thanks, I hadn't thought
of that"), or b) the subject is something so far off the topic of Gentoo
that people ask they don't post about it here.

I probably mis-spoke by saying it's "too alive".  I certainly don't want
to give the impression that I'm burdened by the amount of mail
generated; if so, I'd simply unsubscribe.
>> Everyone's got their preference; some like mailing lists and come here.
>> Others like forums and go there.  Still others prefer IRC.
>>
>> Also, a quick Google search of "gentoo newsgroup" showed me
>> alt.os.linux.gentoo, and that it's been posted to as recently as less
>> than a month ago.  What's wrong with that newsgroup?
> 1.) It's not even officially anounced on gentoo.org
> 2.) It is not on a public available gentoo server. I first would need
> access to alt.os.linux.gentoo.
> 3.) It is not synchronized with the mailing list.
> 4.) The leaders of the community don't support it.
>
> How should it work then? Just because it has gentoo in it's name?
1.) That's a separate discussion, one you'd have to take up with the
Gentoo devs.  You can ask if there's interested here, but I would think
that's about as far as this mailing list could go with it.
2.) It's been a while since I used newsgroups, but I thought you pointed
your newsreader to a server that had the newsgroup in question, and then
read it from there?  If your news server doesn't have that newsgroup,
you should ask for it?  Other than that, I can't help; as I said, it's
been a long time since I used it.
>> And I, for one at least, use Thunderbird to read my e-mail; the
>> interface is pretty much the same for mail and news.  A little
>> configuration change and I'd be using news.  But I like the mailing
>> list, not newsgroups.  (shrug)
> Right for a thunderbird user there is no real difference at all. He is
> already "advanced". Probably one should say less retarded.
I didn't say I was "advanced".  But are you saying that using a
newsgroup is really that different that using e-mail?  You double-click
on messages to open them, you click a button to reply to them, you type
text in to make the body of the reply, and then you click send.  The
main difference I see has to do with public vs. private access.  Even
news gets replicated around to every server that chooses to offer that
group.  So either it goes to a bunch of mailboxes, or a bunch of news
servers.
> Saying this I currently write from google web on windows. But the
> reason is, that I try to port Gentoo to Cygwin.
>
> I still think a newsserver should be the backbone of a good community.
> Mail and forums should be additional doors for those which are brought
> up in the world of windows and google. Best they are fully
> synchronized and it is the same database.
Well, I haven't used it, but others are telling you you can use gmane if
you want to use it as a newsgroup.  I can't add anything more to that.
> Al
Jake Moe

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

> Well, whether the headers are from an IMAP server or an NNTP server,
> they're still headers.  It's my understanding that Thunderbird only

point 1:

Right, if you compare IMAP and NNTP it is similar in this. In NNTP it
is the default to only read the header. In mail (IMAP, POP, HTML) it
is the default to get it all deliverd. That strongly influences how
the community as a whole feels about postings and discussions. It's
not only about the single user.

> downloads everything in my mail folder because I tell it to.  I could
> just as easily not tell it to, and only double-click on the messages
> that are interesting to me, and simply delete the rest.  Since I'm
> trying to learn as much as possible about Gentoo (I've only been using
> Linux about a year or two), I choose to download it all, cause I'm going
> to read it all; I learn a lot from things that I don't even intend to use.

point 2:

That is the most important point. In NNTP you can download an read all
postings from the past  (with or without the body). You can search
them, without the use of a search machine, directly from your reader.
You don't need to discuss the same question again and again.

In mail you can only read the postings from the moment you subscribed.
Once you did loose them, your knowlage base is gone.

> to give the impression that I'm burdened by the amount of mail
> generated; if so, I'd simply unsubscribe.

That is the feeling about postings in mail. In NNTP you would not feel
this way. You would say that you read fewer of the postings.

> 1.) That's a separate discussion, one you'd have to take up with the
> Gentoo devs.  You can ask if there's interested here, but I would think
> that's about as far as this mailing list could go with it.

point 3:

It would require one strong admin in the developers team, convinced
itself of the advantages and with a missionary nature.

> 2.) It's been a while since I used newsgroups, but I thought you pointed
> your newsreader to a server that had the newsgroup in question, and then
> read it from there?  If your news server doesn't have that newsgroup,
> you should ask for it?  Other than that, I can't help; as I said, it's
> been a long time since I used it.

point 4:

You think of those big news providers, that serve many groups. I think
of a gentoo owend news server, that only provides the gentoo groups,
nothing else. You subscribe directly to that gentoo server, not to the
newsserver of your provider.

> I didn't say I was "advanced".  But are you saying that using a
> newsgroup is really that different that using e-mail?  You double-click

I consider you advance if you use thunderbird and you know to use the
options of IMAP.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:

> 
> It would require one strong admin in the developers team, convinced
> itself of the advantages and with a missionary nature.
> 

nobody likes people like that.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

> going "Uh duh, why didn't I think of that" or "Thanks, I hadn't thought
> of that"), or b) the subject is something so far off the topic of Gentoo

I want to specially point out this. I think it a good habit, to say
thank you. It motivates people to support and is always worth a
posting. I also think it a good habit to summarize the result of a
thread in a way, that makes it usefull for the archives.

In a mailing list you experience such a postings as unnecessary load.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
> > going "Uh duh, why didn't I think of that" or "Thanks, I hadn't thought
> > of that"), or b) the subject is something so far off the topic of Gentoo
> 
> I want to specially point out this. I think it a good habit, to say
> thank you. It motivates people to support and is always worth a
> posting. I also think it a good habit to summarize the result of a
> thread in a way, that makes it usefull for the archives.
> 
> In a mailing list you experience such a postings as unnecessary load.
> 
> Al

there is no need for that. You can just SEARCH the archives. And there are a 
lot of them. From gentoo's own to MARC.

So.. what does news bring to the table? More work?
And what advantages? None at all.

Strong points to support news. I see.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[kashani]

On 9/6/2010 4:55 PM, Al wrote:
> Well that is the first advantage of a newsreader. It does not spam
> your mailbox. You select yourself what you want to read by the header.
> The other contents are never delivered to you, eat up neither traffic
> nor space. People don't really need to complain of to much traffic.

	I'd be interested in how many people still have access to a news server 
these days. I don't and I'm not particularly interested in having to pay 
for access when email works well enough.

kashani

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 06:27 on Tuesday 07 September 2010, kashani 
did opine thusly:

> On 9/6/2010 4:55 PM, Al wrote:
> > Well that is the first advantage of a newsreader. It does not spam
> > your mailbox. You select yourself what you want to read by the header.
> > The other contents are never delivered to you, eat up neither traffic
> > nor space. People don't really need to complain of to much traffic.
> 
> 	I'd be interested in how many people still have access to a news 
server
> these days. I don't and I'm not particularly interested in having to pay
> for access when email works well enough.
> 
> kashani


There's a public news server on my work network.
My team is supposed to maintain it.
Shit, I'M supposed to maintain it.

I have no idea where it is, what it is, how to log into it or even what it's 
hostname is. It's just there, in collective memory, as something that used to 
was and might still be.

No member of the public has asked any question about it for years (I would 
know - I maintain the ticket queue that support mails for news would have to 
go into). And this is the largest business-serving network in the country 
(i.e. not some small minor player ISP).

If that's not a damning indictment against news, then I don't know what is.

I don't know who this fellow Al is, but he seems to have a stuck idea from 10+ 
years ago. Gentoo doesn't have a newsgroup probably because Gentoo users do 
not want one.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

> I don't know who this fellow Al is, but he seems to have a stuck idea from 10+
> years ago. Gentoo doesn't have a newsgroup probably because Gentoo users do
> not want one.

My father hasn't internet at all and he doesn't miss it. There are
even people that can't read. They don't miss it. There are devolopers
that never used a version management. They think they don't want it.

So what do you want to say?

Gentoo is developers network not a rest home.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 12:05 on Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al did 
opine thusly:

> > I don't know who this fellow Al is, but he seems to have a stuck idea
> > from 10+ years ago. Gentoo doesn't have a newsgroup probably because
> > Gentoo users do not want one.
> 
> My father hasn't internet at all and he doesn't miss it. There are
> even people that can't read. They don't miss it. There are devolopers
> that never used a version management. They think they don't want it.
> 
> So what do you want to say?
> 
> Gentoo is developers network not a rest home.


We've been here a while and no-one has voiced a desire for a newsgroup. 
Therefore there isn't one.

You are new here and your desires appear to conflict with the overall group.

See where we're going with this?



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Allan Gottlieb]

Al <oss.elmar@googlemail.com> writes:

>> I don't know who this fellow Al is, but he seems to have a stuck idea from 10+
>> years ago. Gentoo doesn't have a newsgroup probably because Gentoo users do
>> not want one.
>
> My father hasn't internet at all and he doesn't miss it. There are
> even people that can't read. They don't miss it. There are devolopers
> that never used a version management. They think they don't want it.
>
> So what do you want to say?
>
> Gentoo is developers network not a rest home.

Many of us on the mailing list (e.g. me) have used newsgroups.  I prefer
the mailing list interface.  I must say that emacs/gnus the distinction
is blurred.  All the gentoo-user mail goes to the gentoo-user "group"
in gnus and thus doesn't clutter up my primary and course mailboxes

I admit to having very good internet connectivity.

allan

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
> Gentoo is developers network not a rest home.

and none of the developers or the users see a need for a news server.

Btw, why are you talking about a 'developers network' and see a must have in a 
news server?

As far as I can tell from that other thread you know zero about linux - which 
means you are not a dev. Which also means that you can keep the prosetelyzing 
to yourself.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

>
>        I'd be interested in how many people still have access to a news
> server these days. I don't and I'm not particularly interested in having to
> pay for access when email works well enough.
>

You don't have to pay for access. Everybody can can run his own server
for his own groups. It's the same like running a mailinglist or
running an apache.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010 10:47:49 Al wrote:
> >        I'd be interested in how many people still have access to a news
> > server these days. I don't and I'm not particularly interested in having
> > to pay for access when email works well enough.
> 
> You don't have to pay for access. Everybody can can run his own server
> for his own groups. It's the same like running a mailinglist or
> running an apache.
> 
> Al

But then you need to configure your news-reader to grab the groups from all the 
different news-servers that are spread around the internet.

How is that making things easier then a mailing list?

Another reason why news-groups are not very usefull is that most news-servers 
(at least when I last used them) won't keep all the messages.
I have this list (among others) archived on an IMAP-server for quick 
searching.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

It would be as simple as this:

1.) enter "news.gentoo.org" as news server to thunderbird
2.) select the groups you want to read

2 steps not more. That is far more simple than subscribing to a mailing list.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010 11:56:12 Al wrote:
> It would be as simple as this:
> 
> 1.) enter "news.gentoo.org" as news server to thunderbird
> 2.) select the groups you want to read
> 
> 2 steps not more. That is far more simple than subscribing to a mailing
> list.
> 
> Al

Except that then I need to do these 2 steps all the time and for every mailing 
list that I use.

Usenet's strength was that all news-groups were accessible through all news-
servers.
By using different news-servers for different projects, this advantage is gone.

Using mailing lists and IMAP, I can access the list from anywhere with an 
internet connection using webmail, IMAP-clients,...

This way, I only need to subscribe to mailing lists once and only need to 
remember one set of account-details.
With different news-groups, this list becomes too much to remember and 
maintain.

And I am not aware of any news-reader that can handle multiple different news-
servers easily without a news-proxy like leafnode sitting in between.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

2010/9/7 J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org>:

> Except that then I need to do these 2 steps all the time and for every mailing
> list that I use.
>

Only once for the news groups of gentoo. Only one click to subscribe
to a second group.

> Usenet's strength was that all news-groups were accessible through all news-
> servers.

Usenet was the sozial network of the past. It has been replaced by
something better in that function.

> By using different news-servers for different projects, this advantage is gone.

Usenet is gone. The advantage of a projects newsserver is something
very different. Easy to subcribe to and a full knowledge database of
all discussions without switching to a browser. The problem is that
people didn't learn how to do that at all.

> This way, I only need to subscribe to mailing lists once and only need to
> remember one set of account-details.

But you have to set up filters for that account.

> With different news-groups, this list becomes too much to remember and
> maintain.

news.*.org is possible to remember even for me -- and I am really bad in this.

>
> And I am not aware of any news-reader that can handle multiple different news-
> servers easily without a news-proxy like leafnode sitting in between.

Thunderbird. There is no limit to severs you can subscribe to.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010 12:51:36 Al wrote:
> 2010/9/7 J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org>:
> > Except that then I need to do these 2 steps all the time and for every
> > mailing list that I use.
> 
> Only once for the news groups of gentoo. Only one click to subscribe
> to a second group.

Per project, per list, per desktop...
That becomes quite a lot of work.
And there is at least one click to get to the subscribe-list.
Then at least one click per list (or once for "select all"?)
Then at least one click to confirm.

Am counting 3 clicks here at least. And multiply that with all the desktops 
and projects.

As opposed to configuring one IMAP-server per desktop and 1 webpage to remember 
for the webmail.

> > Usenet's strength was that all news-groups were accessible through all
> > news- servers.
> 
> Usenet was the sozial network of the past. It has been replaced by
> something better in that function.

I never considered usenet to be a social network.
We had chat-software for that.
(And no, I am not talking about ICQ, that came later)

> > By using different news-servers for different projects, this advantage is
> > gone.
> 
> Usenet is gone. The advantage of a projects newsserver is something
> very different. Easy to subcribe to and a full knowledge database of
> all discussions without switching to a browser. The problem is that
> people didn't learn how to do that at all.

How do you search through a newsserver without having to download all the 
messages in their entirety?
The error-message someone might be trying to resolve may not even be in the 
subject, but in one of the replies.

> > This way, I only need to subscribe to mailing lists once and only need to
> > remember one set of account-details.
> 
> But you have to set up filters for that account.

Once per mailing list and the filters are included in my backups.
If I need to reinstall a desktop for whatever reason, I need to re-add all the 
news-servers and news-groups...

> > And I am not aware of any news-reader that can handle multiple different
> > news- servers easily without a news-proxy like leafnode sitting in
> > between.
> 
> Thunderbird. There is no limit to severs you can subscribe to.

And can these all be listed in the same list as my email?
My email is sorted as such:
INBOX
|-Maillists
   |-project
      |- list

Can thunderbird, or any other news-reader, plug the news-group-feed into my 
email like that?

In the summary-page, I can easily view how many new messages there are per 
mailing list, I am used to working like that.

But, like Norman Rieß said, if you want to maintain a news server that is 
fully synchronised with the mailing lists, I don't think anyone would try to 
stop you.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Albert Hopkins]

There is a simple solution for this:

      * Enter a bug report at bugs.gentoo.org (It is a web site and
        AFAIK has no usenet gateway).
      * Follow the bug there.
      * End the noise here.

Thank you.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Mike Edenfield]

On 9/7/2010 5:56 AM, Al wrote:
> It would be as simple as this:
> 
> 1.) enter "news.gentoo.org" as news server to thunderbird
> 2.) select the groups you want to read
> 
> 2 steps not more. That is far more simple than subscribing to a mailing list.

You're skipping all the steps that start with "Install nntpd" and
progress forward to "Pay Network Bill."

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Norman Rieß]

On 09/07/10 01:55, Al wrote:
> 
> 2.) It is not on a public available gentoo server. I first would need
> access to alt.os.linux.gentoo.

I think if you want so run an maintain such a server, it would be welcome.

> 3.) It is not synchronized with the mailing list.

It is. At least it was when i used it till a year or so ago.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Kevin O'Gorman]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1616 bytes --]

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Al <oss.elmar@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Jake
>
>
[snip]


> > Why say that "lists are dead early"?  This list I find takes a certain
> > amount of maintenance to keep up-to-date, otherwise it grows to an
> > unmanageable number of e-mails in my Inbox.  If anything, it's "too
>
> Well that is the first advantage of a newsreader. It does not spam
> your mailbox. You select yourself what you want to read by the header.
> The other contents are never delivered to you, eat up neither traffic
> nor space. People don't really need to complain of to much traffic.
>

[SNIP SNIP]


> Al
>

You get the same advantage with some email accounts, if you use them
right.  For instance, this account on gmail is used for mailing lists only.
Because it's gmail I can use filters to attach labels naming the list it
comes from.  Any spam that gets through will be in the minority that
do not have a label attached, and I can ditch them forthwith.

Because it's gmail, I have a private archive of all of my mailing lists
going back to 2004, and I'm only using 35% of my (constantly increasing)
7.8GB allocation.  If I want, I can search on this stuff without getting
false positives
from lists I don't subscribe to.

I can also filter some mailgroups to go directly to the archive, so they
only
speak when spoken to.

I use my ISP for personal mail, and a work account for work.

My point: it's easier and more pleasant to find the right tool for the job,
rather than complain about what anyone else is doing.  For me, case
closed and I can go back to doing what I want.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Alex Schuster]

Al writes:

> being comparingly new to Gentoo I still wounder why the classical
> heart of every open source community is missing, a public news server.
> At least a news server is not offically announced on
> http://www.gentoo.org/ like forums, IRC and mailinglists. (I can read
> some, not all of the lists via infosun2.rus.uni-stuttgart.de.)
> 
> Well, there are mailinglists. But mailinglists send each message to
> everybody producing a lot of traffic overhead. As as result people are
> socially driven to reduce the amount of messages. The lists are dead
> early while IRC still is active.

Hmm, ist this really true? We have good bandwith nowadays, even Dale has 
DSL now, so I don't care about the extra traffic this mailing list 
creates. When it's too much to read, or threads do not interest me, I mark 
them as read, as I would with my news client. I'm using IMAP, so as with 
news, only the headers are downloaded, and the body comes when I select it 
to read. This is fast enough these days, years ago I used pop3, and 
downloaded all new news messages completely and read them in my local copy 
to speed things up. Which I sill like to do for news and mail, because 
then I can do full text searches.

What I am missing is more mailing lists. The gentoo-performance list hast 
just been closed due to too few traffic A pity, because now all those 
topics will show up here instead. Which would, to be true, not change a 
thing, because noone used gentoo-performance, but in an ideal world I 
think people would. But this is not an ideal world.


> Then there are some Gentoo web forums out there. Now that is really
> slow, moving tons of HTML for every single posting. Valuable
> information is scattered all around.

I don't use the forums much. It's not about the traffic, but I miss 
threading - I don't like to read a dozen of pages of a discussion. But 
then, I often just google some search terms, and google finds relevant 
postings. Some from the forum, some from archives of the mailing list. 
Works quite well. Although it is crazy to have the information scattered 
around in all those different places, and I woud prefer to have all this 
in some newsgroups instead. But I don't care too much about this.

> Do we think intelligent people to
> limited to install a Thunderbird to read news, so that people are to
> driven to web forums like housewifes, that only know the web as
> webpages?

No, but if people prefer the forums, even if there are better things, let 
them, you won't change their habits.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

Hi Alex,

>
> Hmm, ist this really true? We have good bandwith nowadays, even Dale has

Take the previous posting of Albert Hopkins as best prove of that:

<quote>
     * End the noise here.
</quote>

So why does he read the thread, if he considers as noise? He could
very simply ignore it using IMAP or NNTP. Obviously he has
difficulties to handle the mailing list in the way you descibe below.

I say it again, from my point of view such a mentality, pressing
people to end a discussion, which has it's own thread, which is not
evil in any way, which is interesting, is the direct result from
prefering a mailing list over NNTP. That has a negative influence to
activy and communication. People turn to IRC because of such social
pressure.

> DSL now, so I don't care about the extra traffic this mailing list
> creates. When it's too much to read, or threads do not interest me, I mark

Confirmed, the extra traffic isn't any problem at all today. Facebook
and Youtube prove that. It is the feelings.

>
> What I am missing is more mailing lists. The gentoo-performance list hast
> just been closed due to too few traffic A pity, because now all those
> topics will show up here instead. Which would, to be true, not change a
> thing, because noone used gentoo-performance, but in an ideal world I
> think people would. But this is not an ideal world.

Good example. I knew that from an NNTP based community two years ago.
There were, probably there are a lot of living lists on that server.
Once subcribed to the server it is absolutely easy to subscribe to a
second list or third list. You get them all presented directly by your
reader.

>
> No, but if people prefer the forums, even if there are better things, let
> them, you won't change their habits.

Right, we can't change them, but we can't influence them by what we
declare as official channels.

Have you considered, that people may be excluded from the Gentoo
community that are used to NNTP. Probable people with good skills in
that special group?

In the ideal world all those different channels would mirror the same
database. But that would require some technological progress to
synchronize without breaking the threads.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
> Hi Alex,
> 
> > Hmm, ist this really true? We have good bandwith nowadays, even Dale has
> 
> Take the previous posting of Albert Hopkins as best prove of that:
> 
> <quote>
>      * End the noise here.
> </quote>
> 
> So why does he read the thread, if he considers as noise? 

because he hopes that you finally shut up?

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

>
> because he hopes that you finally shut up?
>

Why do you read this thread and answer to it? Ignore it.

When you think mailinlists such advanced, there is no reason to be
disturbed by a discussion that doesn't stays inside it's thread.

By your reaction you only underline the limitations of the mailing
list approach.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
> > because he hopes that you finally shut up?
> 
> Why do you read this thread and answer to it? Ignore it.

I would, if you wouldn't put out a large percentage of emails arriving at my 
inbox.

> 
> When you think mailinlists such advanced, there is no reason to be
> disturbed by a discussion that doesn't stays inside it's thread.
> 
> By your reaction you only underline the limitations of the mailing
> list approach.

no, you are babbling about a technology that is as much as dead and demand 
changes. For no good reason at all.
With a newsreader I still would have to mark your postings as read. Or filter 
them out. Just like email.

Face it. News has zero advantages. 

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

2010/9/7 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>:
> On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
>> > because he hopes that you finally shut up?
>>
>> Why do you read this thread and answer to it? Ignore it.
>
> I would, if you wouldn't put out a large percentage of emails arriving at my
> inbox.
>

Execellent. You give the best example why mailing lists influence
communication in a negative way.

You have difficulties to let some people stay in their own thread,
beause it all goes through your inbox. You call that advanced? I
don't.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010 18:57:12 Al wrote:
> 2010/9/7 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>:
> > On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
> >> > because he hopes that you finally shut up?
> >> 
> >> Why do you read this thread and answer to it? Ignore it.
> > 
> > I would, if you wouldn't put out a large percentage of emails arriving at
> > my inbox.
> 
> Execellent. You give the best example why mailing lists influence
> communication in a negative way.
> 
> You have difficulties to let some people stay in their own thread,
> beause it all goes through your inbox. You call that advanced? I
> don't.
> 
> Al

If this were a news-group, your messages would still be filling up the list and 
we'd still need to filter out your messages.

How do news-servers help keep the noise level down there?

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

>
> If this were a news-group, your messages would still be filling up the list and
> we'd still need to filter out your messages.
>
> How do news-servers help keep the noise level down there?

We go in circles here. NNTP is be default organzed in threads. You
don't open a topic that you are not interested in, even if the thread
has 500 messages. Nothing to filter.

People already pointed out that you can do the same with IMAP, that
gmail does the same in the web interface. People that use this
features don't need to complain of to much noise.

It is the rest that complaints of noise. With having mailing list as
default way of communication this rest is bigger than necessary. End.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 21:26:16 +0200, Al wrote:

> We go in circles here. NNTP is be default organzed in threads.

Yes it is, just like email.

> It is the rest that complaints of noise. With having mailing list as
> default way of communication this rest is bigger than necessary.

Who is this "rest", I don't notice the massive groundswell of support for
your claims.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Znqr lbh ybbx!

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
> > If this were a news-group, your messages would still be filling up the
> > list and we'd still need to filter out your messages.
> > 
> > How do news-servers help keep the noise level down there?
> 
> We go in circles here. NNTP is be default organzed in threads. You
> don't open a topic that you are not interested in, even if the thread
> has 500 messages. Nothing to filter.

emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.

> 
> People already pointed out that you can do the same with IMAP, that
> gmail does the same in the web interface. People that use this
> features don't need to complain of to much noise.

or pop. Noise is still noise.

> 
> It is the rest that complaints of noise. With having mailing list as
> default way of communication this rest is bigger than necessary. End.
> 

nope. Wrong. 

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

>
> emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.
>

Good, that you finally start to understand that mails have their
disadvantages in producing noise.

If you would go a step further you will be able to recognize, how this
puts a cap on the potential userbase of Gentoo.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1080 bytes --]

On Wed, 8 Sep 2010 10:43:13 +0200, Al wrote:

> > emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.

> Good, that you finally start to understand that mails have their
> disadvantages in producing noise.

> If you would go a step further you will be able to recognize, how this
> puts a cap on the potential userbase of Gentoo.

If you are unable to configure your mailer to correctly and usefully
handle mailing lists, Gentoo may not be the distro for you.

Mailers are incredibly flexible and powerful pieces of software, not to
mention remarkably intelligent at times. You only have to look at the
tagline mine[1] chose for this mail to see that.

[1] I use Claws Mail, which also handles news, so I can read either from
the same interface, but mail is there and news isn't so I'm still
perfectly happy. I see no reason for a dev to take time away from more
important tasks to set up and maintain a project, the only real benefit of
which would be to kill this thread.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Beware of the opinion of someone without any facts.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

> If you are unable to configure your mailer to correctly and usefully
> handle mailing lists, Gentoo may not be the distro for you.
>

Don't be that lordy, Neil!

It's not me complaining of noise. I know how to deal with threads. I
don't read those topics that don't interest me.

It's definitly the email fans having issues with noise. I would say
there should be much more noise on this list, taking into accoung it
is the user list.

But are users really welcome to Gentoo? Taking your personal attitude?
Or are they just an annoyence for the elite circle considiring the
list as their playground.

I don't wounder if people prefere to use a forum.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 8 Sep 2010 12:19:31 +0200, Al wrote:

> It's not me complaining of noise. I know how to deal with threads. I
> don't read those topics that don't interest me.

I wish I had your self-control :(

> It's definitly the email fans having issues with noise. I would say
> there should be much more noise on this list, taking into accoung it
> is the user list.

Who exactly complained about noise before you mentioned it? In fact, what
is this noise? This list has far less off-topic traffic than most and,
coincidentally, it's exactly the same amoutn whether accessed via an IMAP
or NNTP server.

> But are users really welcome to Gentoo? Taking your personal attitude?
> Or are they just an annoyence for the elite circle considiring the
> list as their playground.

Of course they are welcome. What is not welcome, and this applies to most
walks of life, not only this list, is people who enter an established
community and then proceed to tell everyone they are doing it wrong, over
and over again. Proposing a change to see the reaction is one thing, to
keep banging on it when no one else is supporting your viewpoint is
annoying at best.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"Energize!" said Picard and the pink bunny appeared...

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
>
> Of course they are welcome. What is not welcome, and this applies to most
> walks of life, not only this list, is people who enter an established
> community and then proceed to tell everyone they are doing it wrong, over
> and over again. Proposing a change to see the reaction is one thing, to
> keep banging on it when no one else is supporting your viewpoint is
> annoying at best.
>
>    

May I also add, I and others have pointed this many times, posting on 
this list will not change a thing.  If the OP never files a request for 
this on the bug report, this will not happen.  All this discussion is 
for nothing.  The OP is wasting his time, creating the VERY thing he is 
complaining about plus ticking off the very list he wants to change.

Then again, I suspect that he has already been added to a few folks 
blacklist.  The OP has succeeded in that I'm pretty sure.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 08 September 2010 10:43:13 Al wrote:
> > emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.
> 
> Good, that you finally start to understand that mails have their
> disadvantages in producing noise.

Actually, no...
With NNTP and Email can both be configured to display in threaded or non-
threaded mode.
The default just happens to be different, depending on the mail-client.

In both cases, a "new message" indicator will show, and with both News and 
Email, the same situation exists that you either leave messages as "unread" or 
select an entire thread to be marked "read"
This last is very simple with my favourite mail-client (KMail) and I would be 
surprised if the same isn't true for most mail clients.

> If you would go a step further you will be able to recognize, how this
> puts a cap on the potential userbase of Gentoo.

How does this put a cap on the potential userbase of Gentoo?

One of the largest Linux distributions at the moment is Ubuntu.
A quick check on their website doesn't show a News-server.

The same with Debian, RedHat, Fedora.

Actually, the only one I could find that does mention news-groups (OpenSuse) 
uses GMANE as a mailing-list / newsgroup bridge and points to GMANE.

Even though the Gentoo-project does not advertise the fact, the list-emails 
are accessible through NNTP and GMANE in the same way.

Now please leave it at this.

You have been offered 3 different solutions to your issue already:
- log a bug on bugzilla, as already mentioned
- use GMANE with your newsreader (or the other news-server that was already 
mentioned)
- accept the way things are done in the Gentoo-community and use the mailing 
list as designed.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Norman Rieß]

On 09/08/10 10:43, Al wrote:
>>
>> emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.
>>
> 
> Good, that you finally start to understand that mails have their
> disadvantages in producing noise.
> 
> If you would go a step further you will be able to recognize, how this
> puts a cap on the potential userbase of Gentoo.
> 
> Al
> 

My list mails get sorted in subfolders and only the mails that get in
the main inbox are indicated as new mail. So lists do not generate noise
here.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Wednesday 08 September 2010, Al wrote:
> > My list mails get sorted in subfolders and only the mails that get in
> > the main inbox are indicated as new mail. So lists do not generate noise
> > here.
> 
> If all mail users would be that clever, nobody would have any reason
> to complain of noise and it would be welcome if a list is a vivid.
> Traffic isn't an argument today.

no, but looking at the exciting 'there are 20 new mails in the gentoo folder' 
and then to be forced to realize that 15 of them are you spouting your crap - 
that is annoying.

And news would not change it.

Face it, nobody wants news. Nobody needs news. 

With one single exception. A guy very new to linux with zero credentials but 
the ability to annoy and insult others.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Jonathan]

On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 22:49:37 +0200
Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:

> > We go in circles here. NNTP is be default organzed in threads. You
> > don't open a topic that you are not interested in, even if the thread
> > has 500 messages. Nothing to filter.  
> 
> emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.

Claws mail has a Ignore thread mark.
Which I'm about to use on this thread.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 08 September 2010 17:14:13 Jonathan wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 22:49:37 +0200
> 
> Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > We go in circles here. NNTP is be default organzed in threads. You
> > > don't open a topic that you are not interested in, even if the thread
> > > has 500 messages. Nothing to filter.
> > 
> > emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.
> 
> Claws mail has a Ignore thread mark.
> Which I'm about to use on this thread.

So does KMail, but never tested what it actually does.
Maybe I should on this one...

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Daniel Troeder]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1720 bytes --]

On 09/08/2010 05:27 PM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Wednesday 08 September 2010 17:14:13 Jonathan wrote:
>> On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 22:49:37 +0200
>>
>> Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>> We go in circles here. NNTP is be default organzed in threads. You
>>>> don't open a topic that you are not interested in, even if the thread
>>>> has 500 messages. Nothing to filter.
>>>
>>> emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.
>>
>> Claws mail has a Ignore thread mark.
>> Which I'm about to use on this thread.
> 
> So does KMail, but never tested what it actually does.
> Maybe I should on this one...
> 
That's cool - what does it do? I could imagine it does mark all msg as
read... or what? I mean it's still mail... so it needs to dl it... maybe
it does automagically only download the headers? Oh I like the idea :D

In Thunderbird I look at all the topics (mails sorted by thread), and if
not interested mark the hole folder (mails sorted into folders on
server) as "read". But the next time I check my mails there are new
"unread" mails that belong to that same thread I didn't want to read. So
I have to mark them as "read" again. A function like in Claws and
Kmail... I have to search for add-ons for Thunderbird... thanx for that
idea!

(please note: I'm talking about client-features, not
delivery/storage-systems)

Bye,
Daniel

(sorry for this "traffic", I hope this mail is more worth a smile on
your face than an annoyance :)

BTW: I know n00b-unfriendly communities - and gentoo isn't one!

-- 
PGP key @ http://pgpkeys.pca.dfn.de/pks/lookup?search=0xBB9D4887&op=get
# gpg --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://subkeys.pgp.net 0xBB9D4887


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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 08 September 2010 23:27:52 Daniel Troeder wrote:
> On 09/08/2010 05:27 PM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> > On Wednesday 08 September 2010 17:14:13 Jonathan wrote:
> >> On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 22:49:37 +0200
> >> 
> >> Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >>>> We go in circles here. NNTP is be default organzed in threads. You
> >>>> don't open a topic that you are not interested in, even if the thread
> >>>> has 500 messages. Nothing to filter.
> >>> 
> >>> emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.
> >> 
> >> Claws mail has a Ignore thread mark.
> >> Which I'm about to use on this thread.
> > 
> > So does KMail, but never tested what it actually does.
> > Maybe I should on this one...
> 
> That's cool - what does it do? I could imagine it does mark all msg as
> read... or what? I mean it's still mail... so it needs to dl it... maybe
> it does automagically only download the headers? Oh I like the idea :D

I run my own IMAP at home, so mail is automatically downloaded and filtered on 
that server. KMAil is only the client to access that.
Not sure if it would stop at the headers.
A quick check showed me that all "unread" messages are not shown as "unread". 
Unmarking it as "ignore" does show the "unread" as unread again. So it only 
appears to be hiding the fact new messages appeared.

> In Thunderbird I look at all the topics (mails sorted by thread), and if
> not interested mark the hole folder (mails sorted into folders on
> server) as "read". But the next time I check my mails there are new
> "unread" mails that belong to that same thread I didn't want to read. So
> I have to mark them as "read" again. A function like in Claws and
> Kmail... I have to search for add-ons for Thunderbird... thanx for that
> idea!

Good luck/fun hunting.
Let us know if a similar feature exists for Thunderbird.

> (please note: I'm talking about client-features, not
> delivery/storage-systems)
> 
> Bye,
> Daniel
> 
> (sorry for this "traffic", I hope this mail is more worth a smile on
> your face than an annoyance :)
> 
> BTW: I know n00b-unfriendly communities - and gentoo isn't one!

I agree :)

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Daniel Troeder]

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On 09/09/2010 08:21 AM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Wednesday 08 September 2010 23:27:52 Daniel Troeder wrote:
>> On 09/08/2010 05:27 PM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
>>> On Wednesday 08 September 2010 17:14:13 Jonathan wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 22:49:37 +0200
>>>>
>>>> Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> We go in circles here. NNTP is be default organzed in threads. You
>>>>>> don't open a topic that you are not interested in, even if the thread
>>>>>> has 500 messages. Nothing to filter.
>>>>>
>>>>> emails too. But you still get the 'new mails' indicator.
>>>>
>>>> Claws mail has a Ignore thread mark.
>>>> Which I'm about to use on this thread.
>>>
>>> So does KMail, but never tested what it actually does.
>>> Maybe I should on this one...
>>
>> That's cool - what does it do? I could imagine it does mark all msg as
>> read... or what? I mean it's still mail... so it needs to dl it... maybe
>> it does automagically only download the headers? Oh I like the idea :D
> 
> I run my own IMAP at home, so mail is automatically downloaded and filtered on 
> that server. KMAil is only the client to access that.
> Not sure if it would stop at the headers.
> A quick check showed me that all "unread" messages are not shown as "unread". 
> Unmarking it as "ignore" does show the "unread" as unread again. So it only 
> appears to be hiding the fact new messages appeared.
> 
>> In Thunderbird I look at all the topics (mails sorted by thread), and if
>> not interested mark the hole folder (mails sorted into folders on
>> server) as "read". But the next time I check my mails there are new
>> "unread" mails that belong to that same thread I didn't want to read. So
>> I have to mark them as "read" again. A function like in Claws and
>> Kmail... I have to search for add-ons for Thunderbird... thanx for that
>> idea!
> 
> Good luck/fun hunting.
> Let us know if a similar feature exists for Thunderbird.
I found something:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/221519/
I'm testing it now... have to wait for messages - will report back
tomorrow :)



>> (please note: I'm talking about client-features, not
>> delivery/storage-systems)
>>
>> Bye,
>> Daniel
>>
>> (sorry for this "traffic", I hope this mail is more worth a smile on
>> your face than an annoyance :)
>>
>> BTW: I know n00b-unfriendly communities - and gentoo isn't one!
> 
> I agree :)
> 
> --
> Joost
> 


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 20:31:18 +0200, J. Roeleveld wrote:

> How do news-servers help keep the noise level down there?

If Gentoo had one, Al would STFU about it and traffic would halve!


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Know thyself.  If you need help, call the C.I.A.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Dale]

Al wrote:
> 2010/9/7 Volker Armin Hemmann<volkerarmin@googlemail.com>:
>    
>> On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
>>      
>>>> because he hopes that you finally shut up?
>>>>          
>>> Why do you read this thread and answer to it? Ignore it.
>>>        
>> I would, if you wouldn't put out a large percentage of emails arriving at my
>> inbox.
>>
>>      
> Execellent. You give the best example why mailing lists influence
> communication in a negative way.
>
> You have difficulties to let some people stay in their own thread,
> beause it all goes through your inbox. You call that advanced? I
> don't.
>
> Al
>
>
>    

Can we just argue over the which came first, the chicken or the egg?  
o_O  I seriously doubt there is going to be a news thingy for Gentoo, 
not unless you go make one yourself.  So, why keep arguing over it?  The 
people you are talking to can't set one up even if they thought Gentoo 
did need one.

If you really feel that a news thingy is such a great idea, go to 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/ and file a feature request.  THEY are the only 
people that can even set up what you want.  Us users don't have access 
to the servers.  You can make your argument as to why it must be had to 
them there.  Posting anything here isn't going to make it happen.  Not 
me, not Alan, not Volker or anyone else I saw on this thread can make 
this happen.  Only YOU can go file the bug report and ask for it.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

> Can we just argue over the which came first, the chicken or the egg?  o_O  I
> seriously doubt there is going to be a news thingy for Gentoo, not unless
> you go make one yourself.  So, why keep arguing over it?  The people you are
> talking to can't set one up even if they thought Gentoo did need one.

Arguing is thinking. Sometimes it worth thinking even if you don't
expect a direct result. People wouldn't answer to this thread, if it
wouldn't have any worth for them to think about. At least it's a way
to estimate the overall situation.

>  Only YOU can go file the bug report and ask for it.

It's not done by filing a bug. It's not a bug anyway.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 21:38:59 +0200, Al wrote:

> >  Only YOU can go file the bug report and ask for it.  
> 
> It's not done by filing a bug. It's not a bug anyway.

This is the clearest demonstration of your lack of understanding yet.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Darren Kirby]

>>  Only YOU can go file the bug report and ask for it.
>
> It's not done by filing a bug. It's not a bug anyway.
>
> Al
>

Except that if you had the slightest bit of familiarity with the
Gentoo community you would know that all wish-list items,
infrastructure issues, and other such non-software bug issues are
tracked through bugzilla. You have been told many times that the user
community can do nothing for you. Please do file a bug and see how
long it takes for it to be rejected by the devs. You are the only
person who desires such a feature, and that means, in a nutshell, DIY
or STFU...

-D
--
Support the mob or mysteriously disappear...
I'm on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/badcomputer/

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

> person who desires such a feature, and that means, in a nutshell, DIY

OK, I put it onto my DIY list. :-)

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Dale]

Al wrote:
>> Can we just argue over the which came first, the chicken or the egg?  o_O  I
>> seriously doubt there is going to be a news thingy for Gentoo, not unless
>> you go make one yourself.  So, why keep arguing over it?  The people you are
>> talking to can't set one up even if they thought Gentoo did need one.
>>      
> Arguing is thinking. Sometimes it worth thinking even if you don't
> expect a direct result. People wouldn't answer to this thread, if it
> wouldn't have any worth for them to think about. At least it's a way
> to estimate the overall situation.
>
>    
>>   Only YOU can go file the bug report and ask for it.
>>      
> It's not done by filing a bug. It's not a bug anyway.
>
> Al
>
>    

This shows you don't know how Gentoo works.  If you want to add 
something to Gentoo, you file the request there whether it is a program, 
some neato feature you came up with or anything else.  If they think it 
is a good idea, it will get discussed there, mostly by the devs.  
Arguing, talking, discussing it here is going to get you absolutely 
nothing.  I don't think the people that can actually make a news thingy 
even read this list, tho there may be a few that do.

Since posting here isn't going to get you what you want, why not file 
the request on the bug link and see what they say?  You're not going to 
get anything any other way.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[BRM]

----- Original Message ----

> From: Al <oss.elmar@googlemail.com>
> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> 2010/9/7 Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>:
> >  On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
> >> > because he hopes that  you finally shut up?
> >> Why do you read this thread and  answer to it? Ignore it.
> > I would, if you wouldn't put out a  large percentage of emails arriving at 
my
> >  inbox.
> Execellent. You give the best example why mailing lists  influence
> communication in a negative way.
> You have difficulties to  let some people stay in their own thread,
> beause it all goes through your  inbox. You call that advanced? I
> don't.

Doesn't have anything to do with the communications medium. Email or NNTP - this 
thread has become a rant by you for no other purpose than you own agenda.

You're way off topic for this list, and the community has already responded to 
you multiple times.
They've even pointed out how to get what you want through existing systems.

Please listen to the community and heed their advice on this one.
Otherwise you may just find yourself de-subscribed, blocked, or blacklisted 
(likely be individuals) and you won't ever get the advice you want/need.

Ben