On 14/11/2010, at 6:24 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
Thom Brown <thom@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
It's a shame that a forum can't act as a front-end for a mailing list, so
signing up to the forum actually signs you up to a mailing list (if you're
not already signed up), but without receiving any emails. Messages posted
to the forum would get sent to the list, and vice versa.
That would be cool. Wonder if there's something like that out there already.
I have no problem with this idea. Rather than trying to write a MOD to do this you (or someone) could create a new account with the mailing list address, then subscribe that account to all or some of the forums. Any posts made will be send to the subscriber (which is the mailing list) with nice URLs to reply. This could be implemented immediately.
"Content is king." There is a huge amount of archives, and before creating the forum I did think of ways to cleanly get all the archives into the forums but its fraught with problems, for example to map the email users to fresh accounts would require creating forums accounts with generic passwords or having to contact the original mailing list posters to give them their forum password ... messy. More importantly that information belongs to the greater postgres community and I would have no right to simply copy it all without permission.
I use other mailing lists (
musicbrainz.org, for example) and they work as intended but often you want to ask a question and not get dozens of emails coming to you about other issues. This is where forums are useful (yes, musicbrainz has a forum of which I am a moderator) - but some people like them and some don't, theres no reason why that has to change.
To those who say, it won't work and therefore don't bother. To not even try when forums are clearly one ideal alternative for the postgres community seems silly. Even the largest forums had to start with 0 posts, I don't expect it to take off over night but it has to start somewhere.
The potential is only as strong as the community is willing. I understand nobody wants to sign up to an empty forum but the forum can only grow with support from the majority of people on this list (if they so choose.)
Thanks to the first 4 people who did sign up, feel free to make some posts :)
And such a system
would need to support cross-posting too somehow.
Dunno, seems like we've been discouraging cross-posting lately anyhow.
I wouldn't see anything wrong with forum posts only being able to go to
one mailing list, as long as there were a forum corresponding to each
active list.
regards, tom lane
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