(OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

(OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[M]

This is off-topic, but I hope that someone can give me some good advice:

During the last years, I'be become a real org-mode fan and I want to stay
current and be active in the great org-mode community.
I've subscribed to the orgmode mailinglist about 1,5 years ago and so I have
>17.500 mails in my inbox.

You really have to be organized very well to deal with so much information!
Is there a tutorial somewhere for good approaches, how to participate in
such a list (without doing it as a full time job)?

IMHO, there must be some process like:
Review each new topic
 -> if interesting/relevant mark it to follow what happens,
 -> else if not interesting/relevant, then ignore the following posts.
The interesting stuff should also be stored to be available later for
reference...

How do you handle that?
Are there tools which make such a process easier?

Up to now I just used my old mail client Microsoft Entourage 2004 on OS X
for storing those mails.

Kind regards

Martin 

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Alexander Baier]

Hello Martin,

you might want to have a look at gnus - an news/email client for
emacs. It has something called scoring (I believe this is a concept from
usenet/nntp). It allowes to do exactly what you want to do and even
more. You can tell gnus to hide a particular thread, so you do not have
to see it again. You may even define certain rules that match headers
(subject lines, authors, ...) to tell gnus what you want and do not want
to read.

You can read more about it in (info "(Gnus) Scoring") [in case you do
not know what to do with this, copy it to your emacs and eval it ;-)].

As to storing mails, have you heard of gmane.org? This is a service that
lets you read mailing lists as if they were a newsgroup. I personally do
not save anything from this list locally, as I know I can always get it
from gmane.

In summary, gnus is a great thing, but also very complex and a bit
daunting to setup. I like to think of it as another emacs inside emacs
(which by the way also applies to org-mode) in terms of complexity.

HTH,
--
 Alexander Baier

On 2014-04-16 21:28 M wrote:
> This is off-topic, but I hope that someone can give me some good advice:
>
> During the last years, I'be become a real org-mode fan and I want to stay
> current and be active in the great org-mode community.
> I've subscribed to the orgmode mailinglist about 1,5 years ago and so I have
>>17.500 mails in my inbox.
>
> You really have to be organized very well to deal with so much information!
> Is there a tutorial somewhere for good approaches, how to participate in
> such a list (without doing it as a full time job)?
>
> IMHO, there must be some process like:
> Review each new topic
>  -> if interesting/relevant mark it to follow what happens,
>  -> else if not interesting/relevant, then ignore the following posts.
> The interesting stuff should also be stored to be available later for
> reference...
>
> How do you handle that?
> Are there tools which make such a process easier?
>
> Up to now I just used my old mail client Microsoft Entourage 2004 on OS X
> for storing those mails.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Martin 
>
>
>
>

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Sacha Chua]

Alexander Baier <lexi.baier@gmail.com> writes:

Hello, Alexander, Martin!

> you might want to have a look at gnus - an news/email client for
> emacs. It has something called scoring (I believe this is a concept from
> usenet/nntp). It allowes to do exactly what you want to do and even
> more. You can tell gnus to hide a particular thread, so you do not have

I vote for Gnus and scoring, too. Here's how I've set mine up:

In ~/.gnus:

(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.gmane.org"))
(setq gnus-treat-hide-citation t)
(setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t)
(setq gnus-default-adaptive-score-alist
     '((gnus-unread-mark)
			 (gnus-ticked-mark (subject 10))
	 (gnus-killed-mark (subject -5))
	 (gnus-catchup-mark (subject -1))))
; change this to real address, of course
(setq user-mail-address "example@example.com") 

After you set up your ~/.gnus, use M-x gnus to start. Go into the
news.gmane.org server (use ^ to see the list of servers if you don't see
the gmane server listed) and find gmane.emacs.orgmode. I think you can use
u to toggle subscription/unsubscription.

Adaptive scoring means that if you kill a thread you're not particularly
interested in, it lowers the score on that one, so any replies are shown
with a negative score. You can also configure it to hide messages with
scores below a certain threshold, so you don't even see replies.

I also have some more rules that score things up if they mention my name
or other things I'm interested in. =)

Hope that helps!

Sacha

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Igor Sosa Mayor]

Sacha Chua <sacha@sachachua.com> writes:

[...]
> I also have some more rules that score things up if they mention my name
> or other things I'm interested in. =)
>
> Hope that helps!

yes, it helps a lot. At least me... 

But I'm still unsure how to use it exactly... Is your config visible
anywhere? 

many thanks in advance.

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Sacha Chua]

Igor Sosa Mayor <joseleopoldo1792@gmail.com> writes:

>> I also have some more rules that score things up if they mention my name
>> or other things I'm interested in. =)
>> Hope that helps!
> yes, it helps a lot. At least me... 
> But I'm still unsure how to use it exactly... Is your config visible
> anywhere? 

There's not much more to my Gnus config aside from the snippet I
included earlier. Maybe a score file with this in it?
(("Body" ("sacha" 10 nil s)))
which theoretically adds a score based on that keyword, but I haven't
tested it and it slows loading groups down a bit.

Maybe you can check out the adaptive scoring section in the Gnus manual
and go from there? I'm dusting off my Gnus config too, since it's been
years since I last relied on it.

Sacha

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Igor Sosa Mayor]

Sacha Chua <sacha@sachachua.com> writes:

> There's not much more to my Gnus config aside from the snippet I
> included earlier. Maybe a score file with this in it?
> (("Body" ("sacha" 10 nil s)))
> which theoretically adds a score based on that keyword, but I haven't
> tested it and it slows loading groups down a bit.

thanks a lot for your answer!

(and thanks a lot for your blog, interviews, etc!)

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Bastien]

Hi Martin,

you can try Gnus, of course, but in case the beast cannot be tamed
easily, I suggest following the Org-mode list as a newsgroup.

Use any news reader out there, subscribe to gmane.emacs.orgmode
on gmane.org and let your client do the sorting/scoring for you.

2 cts of course,

-- 
 Bastien

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Esben Stien]

M <Elwood151@web.de> writes:

> The interesting stuff should also be stored to be available later for
> reference...
> How do you handle that?

I subscribe to 396 mailinglist and my Mail/ directory is in the brazillions.

> Are there tools which make such a process easier?

org-mode;)

With C-c C-l you can make a reference to a thread and store it in the
proper location. F.ex if you find something nifty about foo, you can
store a link in 

* emacs
** gnus
*** activity
**** foo
[Some link to someone with something cool about foo]

With this reference, you can jump immediately into the gnus thread with C-x C-o

..and also copy the relevant part of the thread over here and structure
it.

> Up to now I just used my old mail client Microsoft Entourage 2004 on OS X
> for storing those mails.

gnus;), ..viewed threaded.

With u, you can mark a thread, but I find that if I don't organize
immediately when I find an interesting thread, I probably never return
to it. 

With 'k' you can kill the whole thread and jump onto the next one, but I
also find I don't use this much, either. 

What I do, is just use RET 111 on a group to get all the latest mails in
a threaded view and see if there's anything interesting. 

Using topics, you can organize your groups into emacs, multimedia,
vector, operating-system, voip, accounting, etc.

I lack notifications, though. Would be really nice if there was some way
for gnus to notify me of threads where I'm involved got a new follow
up. 

Many times when I reply to things, I have to always check the group for
follow ups, which is wasting time, really. 

Also, many times people reply directly to me, instead of using follow up
to the group. That means their replies end up in inbox and you have to
manually move it over to the group.

These mails lack the List-Id header, which gnus uses for sorting and I
haven't figured out if there's a way to use any other reference haaders
that could be used. 

-- 
Esben Stien is b0ef@e     s      a             
         http://www. s     t    n m
          irc://irc.  b  -  i  .   e/%23contact
           sip:b0ef@   e     e 
           jid:b0ef@    n     n

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[John Hendy]

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On Apr 16, 2014 2:29 PM, "M" <Elwood151@web.de> wrote:
>
> This is off-topic, but I hope that someone can give me some good advice:
>
> During the last years, I'be become a real org-mode fan and I want to stay
> current and be active in the great org-mode community.
> I've subscribed to the orgmode mailinglist about 1,5 years ago and so I
have
> >17.500 mails in my inbox.
>
> You really have to be organized very well to deal with so much
information!
> Is there a tutorial somewhere for good approaches, how to participate
>

[snip]

I must be way simplistic on thus one. I just use gmail.

- if something sounds relevant or I possibly know anything about how to
help, I open the email. If I was wing about that judgement, I delete it.

- either way, from then on replies to that thread show up as flagged
important in gmail. For accidental openings, I generally remember the
ballpark title and delete follow ups. For relevant notes, I keep them in my
inbox until I can chime in to help or try the solution/trick myself. Then I
delete.

- if I missed something relevant and run into an issue, I Google the
problem and generally find the thread again.

- if I don't, the ML points in the right direction when I inquire, often
due to not knowing the syntax to Google my problem :)

For a very small set of things I want around for easy reference, I stick
then in an "org" label in gmail.

This replicates well between phone and browser, and my first step most
mornings is swiping away most emails from the list that came in overnight.

John

> Kind regards
>
> Martin
>
>
>

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Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[J. David Boyd]

John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> writes:

> On Apr 16, 2014 2:29 PM, "M" <Elwood151@web.de> wrote:
>>
>> This is off-topic, but I hope that someone can give me some good advice:
>>
>> During the last years, I'be become a real org-mode fan and I want to stay
>> current and be active in the great org-mode community.
>> I've subscribed to the orgmode mailinglist about 1,5 years ago and so I have
>> >17.500 mails in my inbox.
>>
>> You really have to be organized very well to deal with so much information!
>> Is there a tutorial somewhere for good approaches, how to participate
>>
>
> [snip]
>
> I must be way simplistic on thus one. I just use gmail.
>
> ......
>
> John
>
>> Kind regards
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>>


How do you use Gmail to follow a newsgroup?

Dave

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Bastien]

jdavidboyd@adboyd.com (J. David Boyd) writes:

> How do you use Gmail to follow a newsgroup?

I think John is using the mailing list:
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode

not the gmane.org newsgroup.

-- 
 Bastien

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[John Hendy]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 7:59 AM, J. David Boyd <jdavidboyd@adboyd.com> wrote:
> John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Apr 16, 2014 2:29 PM, "M" <Elwood151@web.de> wrote:
>>>
>>> This is off-topic, but I hope that someone can give me some good advice:
>>>
>>> During the last years, I'be become a real org-mode fan and I want to stay
>>> current and be active in the great org-mode community.
>>> I've subscribed to the orgmode mailinglist about 1,5 years ago and so I have
>>> >17.500 mails in my inbox.
>>>
>>> You really have to be organized very well to deal with so much information!
>>> Is there a tutorial somewhere for good approaches, how to participate
>>>
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> I must be way simplistic on thus one. I just use gmail.
>>
>> ......
>>
>> John
>>
>>> Kind regards
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
> How do you use Gmail to follow a newsgroup?

Like I said, I'm simple -- I didn't even catch the difference between
mailing list/newsgroup! I only read/reply from gmail, and assumed that
subscribing to the mailing list was sending me all activity from the
newsgroup (though didn't really know there was a difference -- is
there?).

Then again, the OP discusses 17.5k emails in his /inbox/, so he must
be doing the same? Or did he mean POP/IMAP subscription to the group
or RSS into an email program?


John

>
> Dave
>
>

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Bastien]

John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> writes:

> Like I said, I'm simple -- I didn't even catch the difference between
> mailing list/newsgroup! I only read/reply from gmail, and assumed that
> subscribing to the mailing list was sending me all activity from the
> newsgroup (though didn't really know there was a difference -- is
> there?).

There is none, the gmane.org newsgroup is just a gateway for the
mailing list.

-- 
 Bastien

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Eric S Fraga]

On Wednesday, 16 Apr 2014 at 20:28, M wrote:
> This is off-topic, but I hope that someone can give me some good advice:

Not at all off-topic.

> During the last years, I'be become a real org-mode fan and I want to stay
> current and be active in the great org-mode community.
> I've subscribed to the orgmode mailinglist about 1,5 years ago and so I have
>>17.500 mails in my inbox.

There's definitely no need to keep all org emails as they are archived
on gmane.  Streamline your inbox!

> You really have to be organized very well to deal with so much information!
> Is there a tutorial somewhere for good approaches, how to participate in
> such a list (without doing it as a full time job)?

As others have said: gnus with scoring (adaptive or manual) and by
judicious use of killing threads that are not of interest to you.  Given
the broad nature of org's capabilities, many thread topics may not be
relevant to you at any given time.

-- 
: Eric S Fraga (0xFFFCF67D), Emacs 24.4.50.2, Org release_8.2.5h-898-g11f8ef

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Alan Schmitt]

On 2014-04-17 17:30, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:

>> During the last years, I'be become a real org-mode fan and I want to stay
>> current and be active in the great org-mode community.
>> I've subscribed to the orgmode mailinglist about 1,5 years ago and so I have
>> > 17.500 mails in my inbox.
>
> There's definitely no need to keep all org emails as they are archived
> on gmane.  Streamline your inbox!

I also like to have a mail copy of the org list, for offline access and
quick search (using notmuch).

To keep the flood in check, I filter the mail as it arrives in a its own
mailbox. Then to avoid going over my mail server quota, I automatically
refile mail that is older than one year to a mailbox that is local to
the computer.

Alan

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Brady Trainor]

On 04/16/2014 12:28 PM, M wrote:
> This is off-topic, but I hope that someone can give me some good advice:

TLDR version:  I've decided to go with newsgroup rather than subscribe, 
and Thunderbird rather than GNUS.

have we established the following ?
3 routes:
  - subscribe to mailing list with your email address
  - simply view the newsgroup
  - RSS
Some apps:
  - Gmane website
  - MS Entourage
  - Emacs GNUS
  - Wanderlust
  - Thunderbird

It was right on topic for me, I was thinking about writing a similar 
question for the last week or so.

However, I don't think I'll make it all the way to mailing list sorcerer 
in one fell swoop.

I did finally get Emacs GNUS working yesterday (ugh, in January I 
decided it wasn't possible with my account), but I couldn't get 
comfortable in it fast enough. I'm tentative about subscribing, so I 
tried to learn how to be a GNUS _newsgroup_ sorcerer. But before I made 
much progress, I found mention that Thunderbird could operate as a 
newsreader, so I'm now using that, and it's nice enough for me, for now.

I would like to learn to better use GNUS at some point.


Brady

The extended version:

I was using almost exclusively the Gmane website, which was fine as it 
was easy to encounter during google searches, but it was not great for 
emailing the list. For one, it seemed to be double spacing my carefully 
crafted messages.

I do like the easy fashion in which I can star messages in Thunderbird, 
and I can take a gradual approach to the learning curve as far as 
controlling which messages I can see or exist, while using the 
beginner-friendly CUA style.

But now that I've achieved a vast improvement over using just the Gmane 
website, I will be reading carefully for set ups that work even better.

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Sharon Kimble]

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Brady Trainor <algebrat@uw.edu> writes:

> On 04/16/2014 12:28 PM, M wrote:
>> This is off-topic, but I hope that someone can give me some good advice:
>
> TLDR version:  I've decided to go with newsgroup rather than subscribe, and
> Thunderbird rather than GNUS.
>
> have we established the following ?
> 3 routes:
>  - subscribe to mailing list with your email address
>  - simply view the newsgroup
>  - RSS
> Some apps:
>  - Gmane website
>  - MS Entourage
>  - Emacs GNUS
>  - Wanderlust
>  - Thunderbird
>
> It was right on topic for me, I was thinking about writing a similar question
> for the last week or so.
>
> However, I don't think I'll make it all the way to mailing list sorcerer in
> one fell swoop.
>
> I did finally get Emacs GNUS working yesterday (ugh, in January I decided it
> wasn't possible with my account), but I couldn't get comfortable in it fast
> enough. I'm tentative about subscribing, so I tried to learn how to be a GNUS
> _newsgroup_ sorcerer. But before I made much progress, I found mention that
> Thunderbird could operate as a newsreader, so I'm now using that, and it's
> nice enough for me, for now.

I'm currently using GNUs for email [2 pop3 accounts and gmail], newsgroup reading, and rss feed reading too. I've moved from using 'Claws-mail' for several years to GNUs, and I've been using it reasonably successfully for about a month now. Yes, it is a steep learning curve, but its well worth it, and other folk are very patient and helpful. Its worth persevering for, and the results are good :)

Sharon.
>
> I would like to learn to better use GNUS at some point.
>
>
> Brady
>
> The extended version:
>
> I was using almost exclusively the Gmane website, which was fine as it was
> easy to encounter during google searches, but it was not great for emailing
> the list. For one, it seemed to be double spacing my carefully crafted
> messages.
>
> I do like the easy fashion in which I can star messages in Thunderbird, and I
> can take a gradual approach to the learning curve as far as controlling which
> messages I can see or exist, while using the beginner-friendly CUA style.
>
> But now that I've achieved a vast improvement over using just the Gmane
> website, I will be reading carefully for set ups that work even better.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
my git repo = https://bitbucket.org/boudiccas/dots
TGmeds = http://www.tgmeds.org.uk
Debian testing, Fluxbox 1.3.5, emacs 24.4.50.6

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Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Brady Trainor]

Necromancy, ~1.5 months

On 04/17/2014 08:45 PM, Brady Trainor wrote:
>
> TLDR version:  I've decided to go with newsgroup rather than subscribe,
> and Thunderbird rather than GNUS.
>
> have we established the following ?
> 3 routes:
>   - subscribe to mailing list with your email address
>   - simply view the newsgroup
>   - RSS
> Some apps:
>   - Gmane website
>   - MS Entourage
>   - Emacs GNUS
>   - Wanderlust
>   - Thunderbird

Just wanted to add two more apps I've discovered and been experimenting 
with:

In KDE, there is knode for newsgroups, and kmail for mail.

I think aspects of the KDE project are even ported to some other OS'.

Brady

Re: (OT) How to follow a mailing list with very high activity (like this one here)?

[Martin Beck]

M <Elwood151 <at> web.de> writes:

> 
> This is off-topic, but I hope that someone can give me some good advice:
> 
> During the last years, I'be become a real org-mode fan and I want to stay
> current and be active in the great org-mode community.
> I've subscribed to the orgmode mailinglist about 1,5 years ago and so I have
> >17.500 mails in my inbox.


Thanks to everybody for the great and interesting answers and insights!
I'll have to check the alternatives.

"inbox" - yes, I really subscribed to the mailing list with my private 
e-mail adress, which means that I 
get every single posting as an e-mail.
That makes 17.500 in the last 1.5 years...

Gnus looks interesting - it would for sure significantly 
boost my geek-level, I'll see.
My current mail client Entourage 2004 will be replaced soon by 
something else - Apple Mail, Gnus, 
...?. 
If anyone has tips for better applications for following such a list on 
MacOS X, I'd be grateful to know.

I'll let you know how it went on...

Kind regards 

Martin