gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Glenn Morris]

The news->mail gateway for gnu-emacs-help (and most likely all lists)
seems down, again, at the moment. The direction mail->news seems to be
working ok.

I reported it to sysadmin@gnu and it will presumably be fixed, but I
wonder if it is time to deprecate the newsgroup interface in favour of
the mailing lists? It seems hard to keep the gateway operating reliably.
(It's already deprecated for bug reporting.)

Someone might like to check what % of posts to gnu.emacs.help were made
to the mailing list in the first instance.

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Tim Cross]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 7:07 AM, Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> The news->mail gateway for gnu-emacs-help (and most likely all lists)
> seems down, again, at the moment. The direction mail->news seems to be
> working ok.
>
> I reported it to sysadmin@gnu and it will presumably be fixed, but I
> wonder if it is time to deprecate the newsgroup interface in favour of
> the mailing lists? It seems hard to keep the gateway operating reliably.
> (It's already deprecated for bug reporting.)
>
> Someone might like to check what % of posts to gnu.emacs.help were made
> to the mailing list in the first instance.
>
>

Although I expect it is inevitable, I find it disappointing to see
news slowly being dropped as a communication channel. While I know
that the alternatives offer similar functionality, it does have an
impact. I personally don't like web based forums and I find my
participation in mail list based groups is far less.\ than for
newsgroups.

Tim


-- 
Tim Cross

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Andreas Schwab]

Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

> Although I expect it is inevitable, I find it disappointing to see
> news slowly being dropped as a communication channel. While I know
> that the alternatives offer similar functionality, it does have an
> impact. I personally don't like web based forums and I find my
> participation in mail list based groups is far less.\ than for
> newsgroups.

Have you tried gmane.emacs.devel?

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Glenn Morris]

Tim Cross wrote:

> I personally don't like web based forums and I find my participation
> in mail list based groups is far less.\ than for newsgroups.

A mailing list is not the same thing as a "web based forum" (I dislike
those too), so I don't understand this comment. And you read and replied
pretty quickly to my message using a mailing list, so lists can't be
unusable. :)

I don't personally see much of a difference between a mailing list and a
newsgroup (mailing lists have subscription and less spam?), but you can
read mailing lists via news if you prefer at http://gmane.org/.

I was only saying "deprecate" the newsgroup. As it stands, I basically
have to read both gnu.emacs.help and help-gnu-emacs to be certain of
seeing every message. I'd prefer to increase the odds of seeing
everything in one place, and one obvious way to do that is to encourage
people to only use one place.

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Tim Cross]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 8:52 AM, Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:
> Tim Cross wrote:
>
>> I personally don't like web based forums and I find my participation
>> in mail list based groups is far less.\ than for newsgroups.
>
> A mailing list is not the same thing as a "web based forum" (I dislike
> those too), so I don't understand this comment. And you read and replied
> pretty quickly to my message using a mailing list, so lists can't be
> unusable. :)


Thought it was pretty clear - there are three main forms of group
based communication - newsgroups, which I like, web based forums,
which I dislike and mail list based broups, which I find I don't
participate in as much.

>
> I don't personally see much of a difference between a mailing list and a
> newsgroup (mailing lists have subscription and less spam?), but you can
> read mailing lists via news if you prefer at http://gmane.org/.

On some levels, they are very similar, but they have some subtle
differences. I can put in extra effort to configure things to reduce
those differences - for example, subscribe to the lists using a web
based address, such as gmail, allowing me to access the newsgroup form
wherever I am connected, setting up mail filters so that the list
messages get put into a specific mailbox and I don't keep getting
alerted to new mail I'm not interested in, setup expiration processes
to get rid of old messages if I've not read them after they have
reached a certain age etc and I will have something approaching what I
now have with newsgroups.

Of course, this also ignores the fact that many mail lists are not
setup correctly. Recipient addresses are not always hidden (as they
are when I post to newsgroups BTW) and I would challenge your point
regarding spam. I use to maintain a separate mail address just for use
on mail lists and I found that without exception, that address would
always receive much more spam than my 'real' address that was never on
any mail lists. Mail lists have been a major source for mail address
harvesting for a long time and unlike newsgroups, I have to provide a
real mail address to subscribe.

The gmane option is a partial solution, but I find its interface much
much slower than my normal newsgorup feed which does not have gmane.

>
> I was only saying "deprecate" the newsgroup. As it stands, I basically
> have to read both gnu.emacs.help and help-gnu-emacs to be certain of
> seeing every message. I'd prefer to increase the odds of seeing
> everything in one place, and one obvious way to do that is to encourage
> people to only use one place.
>

and I was only saying that while I see this as inevitable, it is disappointing.

Tim


-- 
Tim Cross
Phone: 0428 212 217

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Barry Warsaw]

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On Oct 11, 2011, at 08:15 AM, Tim Cross wrote:

>Although I expect it is inevitable, I find it disappointing to see
>news slowly being dropped as a communication channel. While I know
>that the alternatives offer similar functionality, it does have an
>impact. I personally don't like web based forums and I find my
>participation in mail list based groups is far less.\ than for
>newsgroups.

*Usenet* may be dead or dying (I haven't read it in a decade at least), but I
think NNTP is happily still viable, as proven by Gmane.

FWIW, I hope to enable NNTP access to GNU Mailman archives in Mailman 3.  We'd
love to have help with that.

Cheers,
-Barry

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Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Glenn Morris]

Tim Cross wrote:

> are when I post to newsgroups BTW) and I would challenge your point
> regarding spam.

http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/topics?lnk=srg
contains spam

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/
does not contain spam

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Glenn Morris]

Tim Cross wrote:

> Thought it was pretty clear - there are three main forms of group
> based communication - newsgroups, which I like, web based forums,
> which I dislike and mail list based broups, which I find I don't
> participate in as much.
[...]
> Of course, this also ignores the fact that many mail lists are not
> setup correctly.

OK, but neither of these issues seems relevant to help-gnu-emacs, which
is the specific topic I was raising.

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Tim Cross]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:
> Tim Cross wrote:
>
>> are when I post to newsgroups BTW) and I would challenge your point
>> regarding spam.
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/topics?lnk=srg
> contains spam
>
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/
> does not contain spam
>

You miss the point.

With a mail list, I have to provide my email address to a list
administered by someone else and I'm at the mercy of how well that
list is administered wrt how easily addresses on that list can be
harvested and added to spam lists.
With newsgroups or even web forums, I do not need to provide a real
email address.

We could argue that those administering the gnu lists know what they
are doing and set them up so that addresses cannot be harvested. This
would be a reasonable assumptuion, provided of course that the hosts
the lists are managed on have never been hacked :)

You comparison above is meaningless - all it shows is that one has
better spam filtering. For all you know, those subscribed to the mail
list may receive much higher levels of of spam DIRECTLY to their
address as a result of having subscribed to that list. The bottom line
is, to participate via a mail list, you have to provide a legitimate
email address. To participate on newsgroups and even horrible web
forums, you do not need to provide an email address (some web forums
may require registration to post, but usually not to read).

Tim


-- 
Tim Cross

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Stefan Monnier]

> *Usenet* may be dead or dying (I haven't read it in a decade at least), but I
> think NNTP is happily still viable, as proven by Gmane.

At least "NNRP" part, but the server-to-server part is largely
dead, sadly.


        Stefan "reading gnu.emacs.help via eternal-september"

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Sivaram Neelakantan]

On Tue, Oct 11 2011,Tim Cross wrote:


[snipped 27 lines]

> You comparison above is meaningless - all it shows is that one has
> better spam filtering. For all you know, those subscribed to the mail
> list may receive much higher levels of of spam DIRECTLY to their
> address as a result of having subscribed to that list. The bottom line

I'd second that part about receiving spam directly.  My stats mailing
list email id receives boatloads of spam....that too where I'm a
lurker and not post that much.  The gmail spam filters seem to be
doing a fairly good job in removing them.


[snipped 6 lines]

 sivaram
 -- 

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:08:12 +0530
> 
> I'd second that part about receiving spam directly.  My stats mailing
> list email id receives boatloads of spam....

GNU mailing lists have zero spam for a long time now.

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Tim Cross]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 4:14 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> From: Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:08:12 +0530
>>
>> I'd second that part about receiving spam directly.  My stats mailing
>> list email id receives boatloads of spam....
>
> GNU mailing lists have zero spam for a long time now.
>
>

Still misses the point. With mail lists, you MUST provide a legitimate
email address. It is irrelevant whether the lists you subscribes to
gets spam or whether its spam filter is good enough to filter spam
out. You don't  know for certain if people subscribed to that mail
list are not getting spam directly to their inbox i.e. not via the
mail list, but directly to the address they used in subscribing to the
list.

This is the big difference between mail list based collaboration and
newgroups or web forums. With the latter, you don't need to provide a
mail address.

On the whole, the GNU mail lists are very well administered and do not
suffer the configuration issues of many other mail lists where address
harvesting is made very easy. On the other hand, GNU servers do appear
to be targets and have been compromised in the past, so we cannot
guarantee the email addresses that were provided have not been
harvested and added to a spam list somewhere.

As I stated originally, I do see this change as being largely
inevitable, but it is just not true that mail lists are an equivalent
alternative. Some features are lost. The extent to which an individual
may care about that will vary.

Tim

-- 
Tim Cross

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:39:43 +1100
> From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> Cc: Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Still misses the point. With mail lists, you MUST provide a legitimate
> email address.

You already did, a thousand times, when you posted here.  The 1001
time doesn't really matter.

And I talked about the amount of spam on GNU lists not by mistake, but
on purpose: the amount of spam in news groups is by far larger.  So
what if it doesn't get to you by a protocol other than email?

> It is irrelevant whether the lists you subscribes to
> gets spam or whether its spam filter is good enough to filter spam
> out. You don't  know for certain if people subscribed to that mail
> list are not getting spam directly to their inbox i.e. not via the
> mail list, but directly to the address they used in subscribing to the
> list.

Well, I post to many lists, but get very little spam.  So I think your
fears are greatly exaggerated.

> This is the big difference between mail list based collaboration and
> newgroups or web forums. With the latter, you don't need to provide a
> mail address.

If you still believe in the year 2011 that withholding an email
address will make you invisible and unreachable by spammers, then,
well, my sympathies.

> As I stated originally, I do see this change as being largely
> inevitable, but it is just not true that mail lists are an equivalent
> alternative.

I think it's a better alternative.

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Tim Cross]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:39:43 +1100
>> From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
>> Cc: Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
>>
>> Still misses the point. With mail lists, you MUST provide a legitimate
>> email address.
>
> You already did, a thousand times, when you posted here.  The 1001
> time doesn't really matter.
>

Irrelevant.

> And I talked about the amount of spam on GNU lists not by mistake, but
> on purpose: the amount of spam in news groups is by far larger.  So
> what if it doesn't get to you by a protocol other than email?
>

There is a big difference. In the case of newgroups, I choose to go
there and if that means having to deal with spam, it is my choice.
With email, I do not choose to receive spam.

>> It is irrelevant whether the lists you subscribes to
>> gets spam or whether its spam filter is good enough to filter spam
>> out. You don't  know for certain if people subscribed to that mail
>> list are not getting spam directly to their inbox i.e. not via the
>> mail list, but directly to the address they used in subscribing to the
>> list.
>
> Well, I post to many lists, but get very little spam.  So I think your
> fears are greatly exaggerated.

Ah, the old 'it doesn't happen to me so you must be wrong' argument eh?

Even in this thread, we have one other post who states that
subscribing to a list resulted in a significant increase in spam - so
that would be 1 all


>
>> This is the big difference between mail list based collaboration and
>> newgroups or web forums. With the latter, you don't need to provide a
>> mail address.
>
> If you still believe in the year 2011 that withholding an email
> address will make you invisible and unreachable by spammers, then,
> well, my sympathies.
>

Wow, thats a pretty disappointing level or arrogance. You can keep
your sympathies thanks, not interested.

The issue of spam is really only a symptom of the fundamental
differences. The central point is that for mail lists, you have to
provide a legitimate address. You cannot be anonymous in the same way
you can with newsgroups or web based forums - well at least you cannot
without going to a lot more effort. Yes, you can get a one purpose
gmail account or use other mail proxy facilities which can make you
more anonymous, but it is more effort and requires a greater level of
awareness. This may not be relevant to some and may not be relevant to
GNU lists, but it does not change the fact that it is a fundamental
difference between mail lists and newsgroups - the fundamental
difference between a push based approach compared to a pull one.


>> As I stated originally, I do see this change as being largely
>> inevitable, but it is just not true that mail lists are an equivalent
>> alternative.
>
> I think it's a better alternative.
>
Fine and I think it is not. I don't know why you insist on arguing.
I've only stated that it is an unfortunate but inevitable change. I
accept it is going to happen, I just don't accept it is an
improvement.

Tim




-- 
Tim Cross

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:29:56 +1100
> From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> Cc: nsivaram.net@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> >> Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:39:43 +1100
> >> From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> >> Cc: Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> >>
> >> Still misses the point. With mail lists, you MUST provide a legitimate
> >> email address.
> >
> > You already did, a thousand times, when you posted here.  The 1001
> > time doesn't really matter.
> 
> Irrelevant.

I don't see why.

> > And I talked about the amount of spam on GNU lists not by mistake, but
> > on purpose: the amount of spam in news groups is by far larger.  So
> > what if it doesn't get to you by a protocol other than email?
> >
> 
> There is a big difference. In the case of newgroups, I choose to go
> there and if that means having to deal with spam, it is my choice.
> With email, I do not choose to receive spam.

I don't see any big difference.  In both cases, you view the summary
lines before you decide whether to read the body.  In both cases, you
can decide not to read it if it is obviously spam.

> >> It is irrelevant whether the lists you subscribes to
> >> gets spam or whether its spam filter is good enough to filter spam
> >> out. You don't  know for certain if people subscribed to that mail
> >> list are not getting spam directly to their inbox i.e. not via the
> >> mail list, but directly to the address they used in subscribing to the
> >> list.
> >
> > Well, I post to many lists, but get very little spam.  So I think your
> > fears are greatly exaggerated.
> 
> Ah, the old 'it doesn't happen to me so you must be wrong' argument eh?

What's wrong with it?  My name and address are all over the place on
the Internet, so I think my example is very relevant.

> Even in this thread, we have one other post who states that
> subscribing to a list resulted in a significant increase in spam - so
> that would be 1 all

I would like to hear numbers that are behind the "significant
increase".  It could be that a _relatively_ large increase is actually
small in absolute numbers.

And after that, I would again compare it with the amount of spam you
see on news groups.

> >> This is the big difference between mail list based collaboration and
> >> newgroups or web forums. With the latter, you don't need to provide a
> >> mail address.
> >
> > If you still believe in the year 2011 that withholding an email
> > address will make you invisible and unreachable by spammers, then,
> > well, my sympathies.
> >
> 
> Wow, thats a pretty disappointing level or arrogance. You can keep
> your sympathies thanks, not interested.

I don't understand the reason for the hostility.

Re: gnu-emacs-help news->mail gateway

[Glenn Morris]

There doesn't seem to be consensus about deprecating the newsgroup, so I
won't make any doc changes.

I'll just make the explicit point that at the moment, if you reply via
the newsgroup to a post that was original made on the mailing list, the
OP won't receive it, so you are wasting your time. Eg

http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/browse_thread/thread/18138fd91f3ea3/
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2011-10/msg00060.html

http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/browse_thread/thread/51d9f637e2ab92fd
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2011-10/msg00197.html

etc.

Presumably it will be fixed at some point, but it's an issue that recurs
every now and then.