Limited-access technical advice

Limited-access technical advice

[Richard Stallman]

It was reported to me that a lot of technical advice about Emacs is requested
and given in Google groups, which are only visible to people who use Gmail.

Is that true?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Stöckert András]

Google groups is readable without registration, but to answer, one has
to get a Google account.

---
Stöckert András


On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:49 PM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> It was reported to me that a lot of technical advice about Emacs is requested
> and given in Google groups, which are only visible to people who use Gmail.
>
> Is that true?
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation
> 51 Franklin St
> Boston MA 02110
> USA
> www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org
> Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
>  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/
>
>

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Lennart Borgman]

2011/5/3 Stöckert András <stockertandras@gmail.com>:
> Google groups is readable without registration, but to answer, one has
> to get a Google account.

I do not think you have to have a Google account, but things gets a
bit easier sometimes if you have it. And you can have a Google account
with any mail address.

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Lennart Borgman]

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:49 PM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> It was reported to me that a lot of technical advice about Emacs is requested
> and given in Google groups, which are only visible to people who use Gmail.
>
> Is that true?

That sounds strange. You can participate in Google groups whatever
mail address you have AFAIK.

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Jason Earl]

On Tue, May 03 2011, Richard Stallman wrote:

> It was reported to me that a lot of technical advice about Emacs is
> requested and given in Google groups, which are only visible to people
> who use Gmail.

Google Groups is mostly just a web front end for USENET.  In fact, if
you go to groups.google.com and search for "emacs" gnu.emacs.help and
comp.emacs are the two groups that come up as matches.  Of the two
groups gnu.emacs.help is far and away the most active.  So the good news
is that chances are extremely good that the technical advice that was
reported to you as being on "Google Groups" is actually being done on
gnu.emacs.help.

I believe that you *do* have to have a Google account to post to Google
Groups, but you can read the group without one.  Not that I would
recommend using Google Groups to read gnu.emacs.help.  For all of
Google's technical acumen they do not appear to even attempt to filter
spam on their newsfeeds.

Jason

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Lennart Borgman]

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:07 PM, Jason Earl <jearl@notengoamigos.org> wrote:
> On Tue, May 03 2011, Richard Stallman wrote:
>
>> It was reported to me that a lot of technical advice about Emacs is
>> requested and given in Google groups, which are only visible to people
>> who use Gmail.
>
> Google Groups is mostly just a web front end for USENET.

Not any more. It started long ago as that but today it justs includes
what once was USENET. Most Google groups are not in USENET.

For what it is worth I consider Google groups to be the technically
best mailing lists I have seen so far.

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Jason Earl]

On Tue, May 03 2011, Lennart Borgman wrote:

> On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:07 PM, Jason Earl <jearl@notengoamigos.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, May 03 2011, Richard Stallman wrote:
>>
>>> It was reported to me that a lot of technical advice about Emacs is
>>> requested and given in Google groups, which are only visible to people
>>> who use Gmail.
>>
>> Google Groups is mostly just a web front end for USENET.
>
> Not any more. It started long ago as that but today it justs includes
> what once was USENET. Most Google groups are not in USENET.
>
> For what it is worth I consider Google groups to be the technically
> best mailing lists I have seen so far.

That's an excellent point.  It is more accurate to say that Google
Groups is a unified front end over USENET and a whole pile of Google
hosted mailing lists.  However, there does not appear to be a great deal
of Emacs technical advice going on any of Google Groups mailing lists.

Just to be clear, you can certainly participate on Google Group mailing
lists without using Gmail.  I participate in a few Google Group hosted
mailing lists myself.  You have to get a Google account, but you have to
get an account to participate in emacs-devel as well.  Once you have an
account Google will happily send you email to whatever email address you
configure, and you can then read the mail using your customary tools (I
use Emacs/Gnus).

Google does make it a bit easier to use their email service, but you
don't have to use Gmail if you don't want to.

Jason

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Andreas Schwab]

Jason Earl <jearl@notengoamigos.org> writes:

> Just to be clear, you can certainly participate on Google Group mailing
> lists without using Gmail.  I participate in a few Google Group hosted
> mailing lists myself.  You have to get a Google account,

The list admin can subscribe any mail address to a google group mailing
list.

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: Limited-access technical advice

[Christophe Poncy]

On 05/03/2011 09:11 PM, Lennart Borgman wrote:
> For what it is worth I consider Google groups to be the technically
> best mailing lists I have seen so far.
Not for me, those mailing lists are not practical to use, you have to 
send an url in your browser to register without a Google account.

http://groups.google.com/group/googlegroupname/boxsubscribe?email=youremail@address.org

I suppose you have to replace "boxsubscribe" by "boxunsubscribe" or 
"unsubscribe" to unregister?

And there's no way to manage your subscription without Gmail. I am on 
two Google mailing lists related to Emacs, one for Rails on Emacs, the 
other for Magit.

-- 
Support free software! Join FSF: 
https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom?referrer=4574

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Lennart Borgman]

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:49 PM, Christophe Poncy <cp@canaxis.org> wrote:
> On 05/03/2011 09:11 PM, Lennart Borgman wrote:
>>
>> For what it is worth I consider Google groups to be the technically
>> best mailing lists I have seen so far.
>
> Not for me, those mailing lists are not practical to use, you have to send
> an url in your browser to register without a Google account.
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/googlegroupname/boxsubscribe?email=youremail@address.org

Is that really true?

> I suppose you have to replace "boxsubscribe" by "boxunsubscribe" or
> "unsubscribe" to unregister?

That is not true (if I do not misremember).

> And there's no way to manage your subscription without Gmail.

Do you mean without a Google Account, or? Maybe that is a
disadvantage, maybe not.

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Christophe Poncy]

On 05/03/2011 09:55 PM, Lennart Borgman wrote:
> [...]
>
> Is that really true?

Yes, you can try to register to the the Magit Google Group this way 
without a Gmail account or a Google account for exemple :

http://groups.google.com/group/magit/boxsubscribe?email=xxxxx@xxxxx.xxx
>
>> I suppose you have to replace "boxsubscribe" by "boxunsubscribe" or
>> "unsubscribe" to unregister?
>
> That is not true (if I do not misremember).
>

You are right. But unsubscribing by email seems to work, I just tried 
for the Magit google group:

magit@googlegroups.com
"unsubscribe" on subject

>> And there's no way to manage your subscription without Gmail.
>
> Do you mean without a Google Account, or? Maybe that is a
> disadvantage, maybe not.
>
Yes, I meant without a Google Account, I don't want to create one just 
to manage the subscription...


-- 
Support free software! Join FSF: 
https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom?referrer=4574

Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Lennart Borgman]

On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:18 PM, Christophe Poncy <cp@canaxis.org> wrote:
>
>>> And there's no way to manage your subscription without Gmail.
>>
>> Do you mean without a Google Account, or? Maybe that is a
>> disadvantage, maybe not.
>>
> Yes, I meant without a Google Account, I don't want to create one just to
> manage the subscription...

If it is a big problem for you to get a Google Account then of course
Google Groups are not that good for you.

However I appreciate that it works very well both as a web forum and a
mailing list at the same time.

You can use the web forum without using a mouse for example. And the
interface is visually good (at least for me).

And for me, using Swedish language in some groups, it is good that
they have understood what is technically necessary to handle and mix
messages based on utf-8, latin-1 etc. (Some other big mailing lists,
i.e. yahoo, that can acts as web forums too fails very badly on this.)


I do not say this as an advertisement for Google (though I now always
use Google groups whenever I need to create a mailing list). I am just
saying "look, here is a good example of how mailing lists+web forum
could work!".

Free mailing list managers (was Re: Limited-access technical advice)

[Barry Warsaw]

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Apologies for the off-topic and slightly self-publicizing follow up. ;)

On May 03, 2011, at 10:43 PM, Lennart Borgman wrote:

>I do not say this as an advertisement for Google (though I now always
>use Google groups whenever I need to create a mailing list). I am just
>saying "look, here is a good example of how mailing lists+web forum
>could work!".

GNU Mailman is free software for managing mailing lists.  It's also a GNU
project.  Version 3 is currently in heavy development, and we're happy to also
be adding three GSoC students this summer.  If you'd like to help improve the
state of free software mailing list managers, now would be an excellent time
to get involved.

Please contact me off-list or via mailman-developers@python.org for further
details.

now-back-to-your-regularly-scheduled-emacs-discussions-ly y'rs,
-Barry

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Re: Limited-access technical advice

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 03 May 2011 21:49:35 +0200 Christophe Poncy <cp@canaxis.org> wrote: 

CP> And there's no way to manage your subscription without Gmail. I am on
CP> two Google mailing lists related to Emacs, one for Rails on Emacs, the
CP> other for Magit.

You can use Gmane to read Google Groups mailing lists.  It used to have
problems but they are working well now.  In that setup, you're talking
to a NNTP server (Gmane) and don't need to register with Google.

Ted