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Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be.
Luis Villa compares mailing lists and parties on his blog. He is reacting to a blog posting by Máirín Duffy that mocks up a web-based mailing list interface that incorporates feedback for readers and posters. Villa sees the feedback as being essential to reducing "bad conversations" on mailing lists.
"First, the similarities. At most parties, like most mailing lists, most people want to have interesting conversations, and they understand the shared social standards and interests of the other people at the party. And at most parties and most mailing lists there are a handful of people are boors who probably dont want to spoil the party, but who violate those shared norms- some in very mild ways (boring, talking too loud, posting too much), or maybe some less mild (the guy who doesnt think hes a racist, but really is.) If youve got similar mixes of people, why then do parties usually handle boors well, while mailing lists often fail and flame out?"
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Mailing lists? Posted Mar 19, 2010 0:33 UTC (Fri) by robla (subscriber, #424) [Link]
What do you think of mailing lists?
Mailing lists? Posted Mar 19, 2010 1:04 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
Quieter, but annoying in other ways.
I don't expect to accomplish anything at parties. Most people who try to accomplish anything (other than... you know) at parties are avoided (and most of them, too). I think the dynamic Luis probably is after, although it's less fun to say so, is found at workshops.
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 4:42 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
quote: If youve got similar mixes of people, why then do parties usually handle boors well, while mailing lists often fail and flame out?
this has a very simple answer, mailing lists are a single channel of communication, it's like having everyone at a party have to say everything through a PA system that drowns everyone else out while they are talking
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 5:00 UTC (Fri) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]
You don't have a 'kill thread' button in your Email client to silence the megaphone on the other side of the room?
I must confess I don't either ... I use to have one in emacs/vm but I changed to claws-mail and cannot find the kill-thread button. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 5:19 UTC (Fri) by nirik (subscriber, #71) [Link]
In claws mail:
right click on the email subject, select "Mark" and then "Ignore Thread".
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 23, 2010 3:34 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]
Thanks! I can even bind that to 'k' ... though it doesn't skip forward to the next non-deleted message, so it isn't quite perfect. A step in the right direction though.
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 5:13 UTC (Fri) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]
I think it is very revealing that all the people expressing interest in this topic
have LWN subscriber numbers < 1000. Mailing lists are used by, understood by, and preferred by old farts and grey beards and people who can remember using usenet for things other than porn and piracy. Everybody else prefers web forums.
Mailing lists vs forums Posted Mar 19, 2010 6:06 UTC (Fri) by robla (subscriber, #424) [Link]
Guilty as charged, but still....can you name a significant open source
effort that doesn't use a mailing list for team communication? Forums are great for drive-by participants, but not-so-great for core contributors.
Mailing lists vs forums Posted Mar 19, 2010 11:54 UTC (Fri) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
It's the other way around. Web forums *especially* suck for drive-by participants (this includes, but is not limited to, phpbb and bugzilla), because they have to register just to post their single patch. And most web forums don't even allow to unsubscribe, let alone having to remember a password.
At a good mailing list, you can just say "now I'm in" and "now I'm out". There is usually no password (or you can ignore it). You don't have to remember your username after three years of inactivity (I think I now have four accounts at the gcc bugzilla).
Some webpages you can still browse with w3m somehow, others you can't because their <table> is configured in an awkward way or they rely on Javascript or some whack. With MLs, I can use the client of my choice, even text-mode if I desire so.
Mailing lists vs forums Posted Mar 19, 2010 17:59 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I think robla referred to read access: web forums are better for passersby to read because information tends to be more accessible, while mailing lists are better for threaded information but suck to follow conversations. For write access mailing lists may be better for casual visitors (many allow even posting without registration), while forums... well, they suck anyway. With good mailing list -> web converters you have the best of both worlds.
Mailing lists vs forums Posted Mar 20, 2010 7:39 UTC (Sat) by robla (subscriber, #424) [Link]
Well, actually, I was talking about write access for drive-by users as
well. While it's true that mailing lists can be configured any way, the dominant way to configure them these days is to only allow members to post, and I think the dominant mailing list manager is still Mailman, which does have a password regime very similar to forums.
So, mailing list process:
Compare that to forums:
It's all a matter of taste, but as a community manager, I got schooled on
Mailing lists vs forums Posted Mar 20, 2010 7:54 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] The answer is obviously: well, don't configure your list so only subscribers can send mail, and tend to moderation chores as soon as possible. I run a low volume mailing list this way; maybe running one with thousands of subscribers is hard to do.There is something I dislike about mailing lists which is having to decide each time if I send mail to sender, to list, to sender cc list, to sender and everyone else cc list... Each list has its own policy (which I can't find anywhere) and each subscriber has a different policy too: "Don't CC me, I'm on the list", "Please CC me as I'm not subscribed" and I can't ever remember which is which. Hey, get a good mail reader which keeps threads together and ignores duplicates!
Mailing lists vs forums Posted Mar 20, 2010 11:58 UTC (Sat) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>While it's true that mailing lists can be configured any way, the dominant way to configure them these days is to only allow members to post, and I think the dominant mailing list manager is still Mailman, which does have a password regime very similar to forums.
You are being unfair on the mailing list process. Sourceforge for example is a large platform that uses Mailman, and so even trying step 1 and 2 is like people sending "unsubscribe" messages to linux-kernel@ rather than majordomo@. To unsubscribe from Mailman, you don't need a password that is, if you do the unsubscribe by mail rather than going through the extra hassle of the web interface.
Compare with forums:
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 6:32 UTC (Fri) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
Are you kidding? I could never use a pull-model.
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 7:52 UTC (Fri) by socket (guest, #43) [Link] Hey, who you callin' old and grey? I'm younger than my subscriber number, so nyeh. ;)
Some grey. Posted Mar 25, 2010 6:06 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
I, also, am younger than my subscriber number.
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 11:34 UTC (Fri) by Webexcess (subscriber, #197) [Link]
That's interesting. I have seen more resistance to using my open source project's mailing list from new users recently. It never occurred to me that people might actually prefer a web forum (I usually can't stand the things). Maybe I need to get with the times...
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 13:56 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
A tridirectional forum<->mailing list<->NNTP gateway would be nice. I suppose that's basically what gmane is :)
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 22, 2010 15:55 UTC (Mon) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link]
This arrangement is what Mozilla uses - our own listserver, Giganews newsgroups and Google Groups for the web.
Gerv
Mailing lists and a few other communication media Posted Apr 1, 2010 17:50 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]
Gmane is of course more (add public archive, search and directory at least); IIRC Phorum was able to itegrate a web forum, a mailig list and a newsgroup.
PS: my take is: MLs aren't (and shouldn't be) parties; the most vocal "antiracists" are the most historically proven racists themselves; and... and people are people, bytes are bytes, and live communication differs a lot from not being able to see one's eyes. So the article seems like yet another failure, at least on this topic.
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 11:38 UTC (Fri) by pcampe (guest, #28223) [Link]
Where do you get the subscription number of a LWN subscriber?
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 14:24 UTC (Fri) by nosnilmot (subscriber, #746) [Link]
> Posted Mar 19, 2010 11:38 UTC (Fri) by pcampe (subscriber, #28223) [Link]
> Where do you get the subscription number of a LWN subscriber? At the top of the comment(s) they post.
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 11:48 UTC (Fri) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]
> Everybody else prefers web forums.
Which is a good reason for using mailing lists :)
There is some benefit in raising the barrier to entry so that you exclude people who can't use a mail client or subscribe to a list!
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 14:28 UTC (Fri) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
People actually prefer web forums? Yowzers.
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 17:25 UTC (Fri) by da4089 (subscriber, #1195) [Link]
I subscribe to literally hundreds of mailing lists. Their content appears nicely organised in my inbox(es) every day, I'm able to manage it using a single consistent user interface, I can save stuff I want to keep, and I can manipulate the messages using any of the hundreds of tools available.
Web forums typically require Yet Another Login, and even if I am able to get an RSS feed for them with full content, if I want to reply, I need to get a new browser tab, and then deal with whatever strange UI they use to actually post something. To say nothing of the site changing their forum software and losing all the old posts, the spammers (which I can't manage when the site doesn't deal with it), the inability to pipe the content through external tools (patch, etc), etc.
FWIW, the irony of bitching about web forums in a (ahem) web forum is not lost on me.
Not your usual web forum Posted Mar 19, 2010 18:03 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] LWN is a special kind of web forum: threads are easy to follow (as on mailing lists), signal-to-noise ratio is high so you don't need to hide conversations, and it kindly notifies you by mail when people answer to your post. Even so, conversations are not easy to follow in time, between successive visits.
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 22, 2010 15:57 UTC (Mon) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link]
Man, web forums suck. No good "mark as read" at all. No "mark thread as read". No "ignore person". And you have to keep going back to them, and every different site has a different UI.
Mailing lists are a bit better, but subscription management is still a pain, and you have to set up filters manually to put all the mail somewhere.
The newsgroup interface is so the way to go. No-one has invented anything better yet IMO.
Gerv
Luis Villa: Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be. Posted Mar 19, 2010 7:27 UTC (Fri) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]
Easy. Mailing lists are essentially one -> many. On a technical mailing
list, say debian-devel :) , discussion may be tightly focussed. Context is missing, you've got a minimalist text. Post something violently off-topic and you'll potentially get flamed. Others will just ignore you / skip over your name in a thread. Say something on topic which is ad hominem or can be interpreted as an attack on one person's views - you'll get some pitching in to defend that person, others directly flaming you, others flaming the amount of flames and bandwidth used up. Context is all. Occasionally, something fairly minor can push someone to say "Not worthwhile". Forums are generally understood to have wider readership and may have more topics going on. That said, I can't understand the extensive popularity of fora - but nor can I understand the idea that one size fits all. There's also ephemerality - I may say things one way on an archived mailing list with a relatively limited circulation and where I can refer back to previous discussions, something differently on an ephemeral forum, but have to think quite carefully about a blog posting to a really wide audience
Face to voice Posted Mar 19, 2010 11:34 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]
At a party there's a face to every voice - and that face might be punched, so the voices tend to behave better (at least as long as the alcohol level is below a threshold). On a mailing list, this doesn't work. Same goes with queueing: at a supermarket 99.999% percent of people stand at the end of the line, while on the roads (when the faces are covered by a ton of steel and plastic) maybe one in ten driver tries to go around in an other lane or on the hard shoulder to overtake the queue.
Face to voice Posted Mar 30, 2010 15:21 UTC (Tue) by dunlapg (subscriber, #57764) [Link]
Actually, going into the other lane (though not on the shoulder) is the
right thing to do. Using both lanes right up until the merge point means that a 2-mile backup becomes a 1-mile backup, a 1-mile backup becomes a half-mile backup. The lower the amount of non-construction road affected, the better.
Though I merge in early anyway if my wife's in the car, because she doesn't
totally off-topic road-way merging Posted Mar 30, 2010 21:38 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]
I think it depends very much on what you want to optimise.
If there is limited road space for the number of cars, then I agree that using all the available space is important.
However if there is excess car space then I believe it is best to merge early. Merging, as I'm sure you have noticed, is largely a very slow process. If you want to optimise for "maximum number of cars past the blockage once the blockage clears" then you want to merge early so that drivers at the head of the queue only need to think about accelerating, not merging as well.
So as a general rule: If there is space to merge early, do so. If there isn't feel free to use the extra lane (that is what it is there for).
An alternative algorithm is that red cars should be allowed to cut around queues because everyone knows that red cars are faster.
totally off-topic road-way merging Posted Mar 31, 2010 16:35 UTC (Wed) by dunlapg (subscriber, #57764) [Link]
I found this article, which has some reference studies comparing
"conventional merge", "Early Merge" (encouraging motorists to merge earlier), and "Late Merge" (encouraging motorists to merge later) (http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/wz/workshops/accessible/McCoy.htm). Relevant quotes:
"...simulations by Mousa et al found that early merge control strategies
"The results of these studies revealed that the conflict rates are
"Conceptually the Late Mergeaddresses many of the problems that are
The summary seemed to be: Early Merge doesn't speed anything up, can slow
It's a matter of scale. And exclusion. Posted Mar 19, 2010 14:13 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
Parties tend to remain fairly small. Mailing lists (especially the ones that degenerate into flamefests) tend not to be.
Also, you can always kick someone out of a party for being an ass, or not invite them for the next one. Either way you can keep them out. It's a little harder to do that with an open, public mailing list.
It's a matter of scale. And exclusion. Posted Mar 22, 2010 17:24 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but the reason I went to parties - when I was single - was entirely different from the reason I use mailing lists :-)
It's a matter of scale. And exclusion. Posted Mar 28, 2010 13:15 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Drink beer, dance to good music? Certainly easy on mailinglists ;-)
Meeting cool people - to a lesser extend but possible on mailinglists. The
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