8 Oct
2021
8 Oct
'21
10:10 p.m.
On Friday 08 October 2021 13:34:33 Dan Youngquist wrote:
Do I understand correctly that some want to trade in
the support mailing
list for a chat channel? Words cannot express what a spectacularly bad
idea that is. Chat works great for gamers, adolescent busybodies, and
quick easy questions that can be answered instantly by one person, maybe,
but for anything along the lines of a technical discussion it's even worse
than Facebook. I sure hope we can put the kibosh on that idea right now.
What's needed is a clear, concise way to follow a discussion thread, either
in real time or later in the archive. That bill is filled as well as
possible just the way it is, and an ordinary web-based discussion forum is
a close second. Anything else is a huge step down in functionality and
ease of use for the intended purpose.
On 10/8/21 10:50 AM, Michael wrote:
To quote myself:
"It doesn't have to be xmpp/jabber. That might not be quite the right tool for
the job; but I am pretty sure there must be something similar in concept that
would serve our needs."
My original suggestion was simply that we move toward using encryption for the
TDE mailing list. It was Michael's idea to create public/private keys for the
list. However, that was rejected as too user-unfriendly for noobs, which may
be true.
It seems to me that some people just cannot be content until they have their
privacy thoroughly violated and the entire human race is turned into slaves.
Resistance is futile! We will all be assimilated!
So what is it to be, then? I don't especially care about what tool we use, but
we ought to decide to move toward something better.
Stripping email headers might at least be a good place to start. I can't tell
how many email I have accidentally sent to private email addresses (or
received them) just because people don't think to check before they hit send.
Bill
Problems with the mailing list:
- All email addresses become publicly published on the archival site.
That's easy to fix, just strip senders' email address before sending to the
list and archive, which should be being done anyway.
- Censorship blocks mails from being submitted to
the list.
Anyone with that problem can simply send from the web form on the list's
website. Alternatively, an optional encrypted mail-to address could be
added.
- Everyone gets off topic emails
Again, very easy to fix. A few moderators might be a good idea to remind
folks to take extended off topic discussions elsewhere.
- Everyone gets the spam emails submitted
It's the internet; deal with it. Better yet, do what worked very well for
many years on several Yahoo Groups I ran, before they imploded: New users
are automatically put on "moderated" status so their posts require a mod's
OK before going to the list. It turns out that most spammers don't bother
signing up when they know they'll never get a post on the list. And
legitimate new users can easily be taken off "moderated" as soon as they
make a legitimate post. Easy peasy, and solves at least 99% of the spam
problem.
- Since many on the list use [data collecting]
mail providers, then all
peoples’ emails on the list gets data collected.
That's also solved by simply stripping sender email addresses before the
message goes to the list.