Discuss mailing list

[Rouben <rouben AT rouben.net>]

On Mon, Jan 1, 2018 at 18:26 <vv AT cgs.pw> wrote:

> Anunak, that's a very good point about centralization.

> I completely agree with that as being a problem.

I think mailing lists are just as “centralized” as web forums. The server that receives, processes and redistributes all ML mail is still a server, no? And its admin can technically do whatever they please with any content that comes in/out of that server, including tamper with it or block it entirely, if they wanted to be malicious.

On Tue, 2 Jan 2018 00:15:44 +0100
Amunak <amunak AT amunak.net> wrote:

> That's
> pretty dangerous as it could be very easy to remove
> opinions that the maintaner(s) don't like, silence
> opposition or even change or fake messages.

...(snip)...

> It's also way harder to silence
> someone's opinion, especially without notice.

Silently intercept emails from your “enemies” at the MTA and feed your own fake versions instead to the ML for inclusion to the archive (eg. votes). This can be done in real-time and coordinated to start and end with specific events, such as elections. If “enemies” requested copies of their own posts to be sent to them, simply forward them their own original, intercepted posts from above.

Sure, it’s more involved than simply editing a forum database backend, but it’s absolutely doable. The only weakness is if on top of asking for your own copy of your posts, you also cross check the web archives, so you would be able to spot the forgery.

IMHO, the real answer to these issues is cryptography: verified identities/certs and digital signatures.

On Tue, 2 Jan 2018 00:15:44 +0100
Amunak <amunak AT amunak.net> wrote:

> With a
> mailing list everyone has all messages at all times, plus

Not necessarily... I don’t bother keeping all the messages. I only hang on to partial threads that I intend to reply to. I would have preferred to do it through https://lists.opennicproject.org/ and have done so in the past, but given the fact that the posting web interface is so limited (can’t quote email you’re responding to, for example), I tend not to use the web interface much.

On Tue, 2 Jan 2018 00:15:44 +0100
Amunak <amunak AT amunak.net> wrote:
> there is an archive, and anyone can independently check
> that they are receiving the same messages that they are
> actually writing.

You could... in fact I’d argue that is probably the only worthwhile thing to check (see above). However, I suspect some people (myself included) don’t bother checking the web for this purpose, and have set up the ML not to send them copies of their own posts.

If I was really concerned with tampering, I’d digitally sign all my posts and advise everyone not to trust unsigned posts from me.

On Tue, 2 Jan 2018 00:15:44 +0100
Amunak <amunak AT amunak.net> wrote:

> With a mailing list I always see new content passively as
> it arrives in my mailbox, I get to the discussion when I
> can and it's in a place I can easily check together with
> other stuff I check. 

You bring up an excellent usability point, Amunak, thank you! Ideally it shouldn’t matter what medium you use to communicate; the forum software *should* be able to interact with its users via email and web and not treat either group like a second class citizen.

Mailing lists are good at email, but generally have a subpar web experience and vice versa; forums have a decent web experience, but their email integration is generally very half-assed and limited to things like notifications or digests of subscribed topics.

Based on my understanding most email users care about the following features of MLs:

- ability to filter/sort by subject, tags, and/or thread ID (? - AFAIK this is an extra mail header value used to track threads). This is why starting a new topic by replying to an existing thread is considered bad form, even if you edit/delete the subject line. It’s like hijacking a thread on web forums, except email users that choose to auto-archive emails from the ML with that subject line or thread ID, will not see your “new” thread at all... so it’s arguably worse than hijacking a thread.

- ability to respond, within context of their mail reader/writer, be it Outlook, mutt, emacs or sed+sendmail. This is a mindset issue; some people just want to deal with all their “communications” within the context of their communicator - which happens to be email in this case. Nothing wrong with that...

Most web forums would fail both of the above, as the first one requires a completely different approach to what essentially is notification and digest management. Web forums tend to focus on threads or forums you’ve participated in perviously or have explicitly subscribed to. ML email filters are probably regex filters that were built and refined by the user over time while interacting with the lists.

Another big difference is that now these notification settings have to be managed on the web, as opposed to with regexes/filters/macros in your mail program. That could be seen as a *major* annoyance to some, and I can appreciate that.

Finally, I’d like to encourage all the pro-forum folks to take a close look at https://lists.opennicproject.org/ ; look around, establish a password, set up your profile, browse the archive, try responding to a post from the web... I think you’ll find that the current web interface is surprisingly functional, but it’s also severely limited. Now imagine the same web interface with a “phpBB” skin. :) I hope you get what I’m insinuating here: I think it may be easier to improve the archive browse/post system than it would be to implement 2-way email integration into something like phpBB. Why? Because presenting existing data in a more useful/friendly fashion is a lot easier than trying to get two inherently incompatible systems (email and web forums) that were never intended to work together, to actually work together without breaking any features.

If you managed to get all the way down here, also thank you for reading my lengthy rant.

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Rouben

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Rouben