[Rnb] mailman vs roger / the future

[Scott Nichol]

  Dave,

Thank you for replying to this Mailman submission.

I feel that it's important to say that our Linux organisation is a real 
rather than a virtual club and therefore until such time that 
authenticated virtual voting is available to us we must stick to the 
principle of one man one vote and that those who are unable or unwilling 
to attend club meetings must therefore have no say in the running of the 
club. A bit like general elections really - if you don't vote you don't 
have a say.

Should you wish to unilaterally change this principle then please come 
to the next meeting and let us know your views and put them to a 
democratic vote.

As for Mailman, well it's just soooooh last century and not quite in 
keeping with the progressive outlook that a Linux club like ours should 
have. We embrace new technology where it offers us new opportunities and 
turn our back on outdated practices. That's not to say that it has no 
future at all. We do still use it to advertise RnBLUG meetings.

For more focussed discussions Mailman is somewhat inappropriate as 
points often get lost in the general melee and volume of traffic at busy 
times. Also there is absolutely no help or GUI facility to aid beginners 
like myself. These are some of the reasons for investigating the use of 
the Elgg CMS as it contains a forum and group facilities for more 
specific conversations. Please don't dismiss alternatives out of hand 
and without at least logging in for a quick and informative look. After 
all, informed opinion is much better than uninformed chucking toys out 
of the pram. I personally, would look forward to hearing  your opinion 
on Elgg or some other superior alternative.

It is also stunning news to me that there are 40 Linux geeks, like me, 
interested in our club. Mailman obviously holds this information but 
until now neither yourself nor Mailman has informed the club that there 
is that amount of potential support. Another failing in Mailman I think. 
It would be obvious to CMS users that there was a particular volume of 
followers.

Elgg itself is currently only being evaluated - you would have known 
this if you had been at any of the last 2 meetings.

We can reference Elgg on this list for any of the 40 "active" members 
that are on this list in future submissions.

Finally I note your recent comment - "I have little interest in the user 
group" and would respectfully remind you of paragraph two above.

Regards,

Scott Nichol

Elgg Website (for evaluation) - 
http://www.bigtoe.speedycheetah.com/whatsthis/elgg/
(I know, rubbish url)



On 30/07/2010 10:41, David Goodwin wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-07-30 at 09:08 +0000, Roger Frisby wrote:
>> As usual I will be at the next meeting. Tuesday the 3rd. of August,
>>   2010. That's AUGUST. we are now three quarters of the way through this
>>   year.  David if you do not understand the purpose of the "ELGG Thingy"
>>   Then I suggest that it is because you have not attended a meeting this
>>   year.
>>
> Bad me!
>
> There are however 40 individuals signed up to the mailing list; I'm not
> sure it's a good idea for the 3-4 members who manage to make a physical
> meeting to take decisions in isolation. It would help if you posted a
> summary of the discussion in the meeting to the list (I don't remember
> seeing one) - which may prompt inactive members to get involved; this
> may also result in alternative/better suggestions to ELGG.
>
>
> At the moment, I have little interest in the user group, if one of you
> do wish to take over running it (or at least being responsible for
> mailman, and supposedly arranging meetings(!) - although you appear to
> have taken this into your own hands ;) ) I'm more than happy to hand
> over control.
>
> There are no costs involved in running the group - aside from the domain
> name which I pay for every two years (£20ish); web site hosting is
> provided by my company [ http://www.palepurple.co.uk ] on one of our
> servers which can remain to be the case unless you decide to move away
> from dokuwiki, wordpress or a static HTML site.
>
>
>> So for the record, we are trying to find an alternative to mailman.
>>   Which is absolute rubbish. There are far better forums around, where
>>   comments can be posted and responded to, without having to wade
>>   through all of this gunge, just to establish who said what.
> Roger - mailman appears rubbish to you because you have digest mode
> turned on. Go to https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/rnb login
> etc and turn off digest mode. Then every message will come to you as a
> separate email - there will be no 'wading through' of stuff - and your
> mail client will handle the threading etc of responses (if you allow it
> to). Furthermore, for the rest of us, your replies will then show up in
> the "right place" with an appropriate subject (not Rnb Digest Vol XX,
> Issue N). If someone wishes to view historic messages, then they can
> view the archive online, or download it and wade through it manually.
>
> There have been very few occasions where this mailing list has more than
> 2-3 messages a day, so it's not like you're going to get snowed under in
> email.
>
>
> In mailman's favour :
>
> a) You don't have to remember to visit some random website to see the
> conversation ...
> b) It's free (thanks to lug.org.uk) (no hosting costs etc)
> c) There is no maintenance from our side for it - aside from deleting
> about 3-4 messages a month which get caught in the administrative
> holding bucket as they're spam and/or sent by non-list members. If you
> move to using a 3rd party forum, who will take responsibility for
> backups/maintenance of that forum (patching, updates etc)?
>
>
> If you still don't like mailman, have you looked at Google groups? - I
> believe it provides a web and email based 'frontend' - so you could
> follow the conversation however you wish.
>
>
> David.
>
>
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