44 lines
2.1 KiB
HTML
44 lines
2.1 KiB
HTML
<p>A while back I did a post on e-mail and why I think it's a superior
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means of communication. A middle ground between snail mail and annoying
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instant communication. And along the same lines of my previous post on
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RSS feeds, I think we should make a return to mailing lists as a
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replacement for web forums.</p>
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<p>So in case my reader does not know what a mailing list is, let me
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briefly explain. The way a mailing list works is that you subscribe (via
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e-mail or web interface) to a given mailing list. Once you do this, you
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can send e-mails to a given e-mail address and it will be forwarded to
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everyone who is subscribed to the mailing list. In other words, it's a
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way of broadcasting messages sent to a single address to everyone
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subscribed to the broadcast.</p>
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<p>So, how does this replace web forums? Quite simple: when you send a
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new e-mail to the mailing list it starts a new thread, and people will
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respond to that thread. What's more, it's actually more versatile than a
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web forum, since it allows for conversations to branch out instead of
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following a linear progression. If you have a mailing client that's
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worth something then it supports showing conversation threads.
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Basically, this means that it will show to which message you are
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replying to, allowing people to reply to different subthreads of a
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conversation, essentially <i>forking</i> it. For an example of this,
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check out an actual mailing list like the Suckless "dev" mailing
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list<sup><a href="#r1" >[1]</a></sup>. What's more, because it's e-mail,
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you can attach anything you want - although usually there's a size
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limit, but even web forums have this.</p>
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<p>But perhaps most importantly, with web forums you have to create
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accounts for every different web forum you connect to. There have been
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efforts to standardize using stuff like OpenID, and now with Google and
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Facebook logins everywhere. But it's still kinda clunky. With mailing
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lists you only require something that everyone already has: an
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e-mail.</p>
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<p>
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<label id="r1" >[1]</label>
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<a href="http://lists.suckless.org/dev/1902/index.html"
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target="_blank" >
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http://lists.suckless.org/dev/1902/index.html
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</a>
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</p>
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