> In message <199409092302.TAA16401@wilma.cs.utk.edu>, Keith Moore writes:
> >I get this kind of complaint all the time from people who are on
> >some of the lists I run....that is, that they want stuff to be
> >posted to Usenet so they can use their more functional news reader,
> >instead of getting a more functional mail reader! (All of the
> >functions listed above exist for e-mail...but not as widely as
> >they do for usenet...probably this is because usenet became a
> >swamp first.)
>
> So where can I get a mail reader for UNIX, with killfiles,
> threading, and all the other features of trn without having to bug
> my news admin to gate it to a local newsgroup? (in my case the news
> admin is me, but not for everyone)
The equivalent of kill files can be done with .maildelivery (if you have MH) or
procmail or any of a half a dozen other mail tools.
Offhand I don't know of an integrated mail reader that does threads. But MH's
pick program can find references headers including a particular message-id, and
I seem to recall a version of MM that could find all replies to a particular
message.
I have also seen an add-on to MH called 'loosend' that sorted mailboxes into
threads, based on in-reply-to, references, subject, and date headers (using the
latter two as a last resort). I don't think it's generally available, but will
ask the author...
> At last count, Stephanie's list had about 1000 public mailing
> lists out there. Who knows how many LISTSERV lists are out there that
> aren't registered, but probably almost that many. Then count all the
> _non_ public lists. The majority of sites of any reasonable size I know
> have at least several internal mailing lists. Those are potentially on
> the order of several thousand.
Okay, well that sounds like it might meet my "worth the bandwidth criteria
then. But are there actually 1000s of list managers (as opposed to lists)?
Frequently a single person manages several lists.
> Remember for Usenet, all you need is _one_ person at a site that reads the
> group, and you break even. After that, you're ahead.
Not true. You break even with respect to the amount of disk space and
the amount of network bandwidth used to transmit the message to your site.
But many newsgroups aren't read by anyone at a majority of sites. For
each of those sites, bandwidth and disk space is wasted.
> I resent being implied "irresponsible" when it's blatantly clear that
> list-managers is missing a large potential audience, and that a newsgroup
> is both sufficent and desirable given the readership.
Even if the readership would be large enough to warrant distribution by Usenet,
the signal-to-noise ratio might well decrease to the point that the
list-managers discussion would no longer be useful.
Unlike Usenet, this list actually seems to be useful a fair amount of the time.
I'd hate to see that go away.
Keith
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