A couple of years ago two lists that I work with joined with several other
lists to be carried on an inter-law-school, usenet-based newsgroup network
that was only open to students and faculty at the half-dozen or schools
involved. Each list was given its own newsgroup, which could be set as
read only in relation to the list or a full read/write or two-way message
exchange with the list. The newsgroups were also archived so that they
were readable by the public via WWW from the law schools Web site.
The next step was to have been a jerry rigged set up to permit Web users
write as well as read access to the newsgroup/list set up. As I recall
there was some discussion of passwording the write access to the groups
from the Web. But, regrettably the third year law student, Larry Donahue,
who put the network together graduated before the last step--two way Web
access--had been implemented.
I now see that software, like O'Reilly and Associates' recent Web Board
package, is being written specifically to support Web based discussion
groups. I checked out the sales materials at their Web site and the
package of their's does not appear to handle linking the Web groups with
corresponding mailing lists.
There are also at least three on-line service packages (they used to be
called BBSs) are being distributed with discussion groups that are shared
between the dial up or telenetable on-line service (BBS) and an HTML
implamentation on a mirror Web site of the discussion groups and every
thing else that is available on the on-line service to dial up and telenet
users.
With all of these developments, I was hoping that the participants here
might know of software that will permit a two-way link between the
email-based, list and a Web-based counterpart discussion group. This
would be a very attractive option for large volume discussion groups and
for users whose mail boxes are overwhelmed by the traffic from the
various lists that they belong to.
Thanks,
John DeBruyn
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Send any private replies to jdebruyn@usa.net
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