Re: No easy way to join discussion in existing thread when not subscribed

Amir,

* Amir Rohan (amir.rohan@mail.com) wrote:
> It is perhaps precisely the point that you as a veteran aren't impressed
> by all that, while as a newcomer I found it exasperating
> and off-putting. Ironically, once I started participating on the
> lists, I've been consistently surprised by the helpfulness and
> patience of the people on it.

Apparently I didn't convey my thoughts on it very well.  What I was
getting at is that these are largely problems which are related to using
mailing lists and which are not specific to our community (I'd expect
someone to have similar issues getting involved with Debian, for
example).

I'm all for working to improve on it.

> > If the individual isn't familiar with mailing lists in general, it's
> > unlikely that we're going to get over that hurdle very easily.
>
> But we can and should address specific pain points.

Sure, but how?  The 'mail-me-the-email' idea seems workable, but it'd be
awful nice if there was an easy way to import an entire thread into your
MUA of choice.

> >> 6. Wait, I need to register to download? this is getting ridiculous.
> >
> > You don't have to register to download the mbox, you just have to 'log
> > in', where 'logging in' is reading the authorization prompt and putting
> > in what it tells you.
>
> I stand corrected, while admitting that I missed that message
> accompanying the HTTP Basic Auth dialog, went and registered,
> and now it doesn't ask for a password anymore. Perhaps I was
> inattentive, but the web has established norms now:
> "Enter user/pass" triggers the "go register" behaviour because
> that's how it works on every login form everywhere.

I'm not sure there's anything we can do about that.  Do you have any
suggestions?  It's pretty clear in the Auth dialog, imv.  The prompt is:

Please authenticate with user 'archives' and password 'antispam'

> >> 12. 1500 messages, what was the thread name again (go to browser, find
> >> thread, search, locate thread, located message).
> >
> > I have this frustration with mutt. :)  Which is why I'd like an mbox of
> > just the thread that I want to reply to.
>
> Me too, I'm just saying that only solves one problem and not another,
> while a "mail me the thread/message" feature solves both.
> If you implements  "mail copy of message", the cost of implementing
> "mail copy of thread message" is probably O(0), amortized.

eh, I'm not sure it's quite that simple, and for my part, being able to
wget the mbox would be much better than having it mailed to me.

> Now, This one thing I mentioned is suboptimal, can we please improve it?

I don't believe anyone is stopping you, or someone else, from moving
forward on the mail-a-copy proposal, but there's work to be done there
and a number of us are quite occupied with getting ready for 9.5 beta1
or with other projects.

> > Here's a fun question- is there some way we could integrate with gmail?
>
> Perhaps, but I don't use gmail.

Sure, but a lot of people do.  My general point was that it'd be neat if
we could provide tools to make it easier for users to integrate.

> >> And soon after *that*, you learn there's no bugtracker.
> >
> > Yes, well, we're making some progress on that now.  I've got a few other
> > things which are higher priority given that we have a drop-dead date for
> > beta, but I'm hoping to get to it soon.
>
> I'd be glad to help implement whatever works, if someone points me
> at the code for the website.

I assume you're referring to the above changes to the archives system,
not the bug tracker debate, so, the archives code is here:

http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=pgarchives.git;a=summary

The website code is here:

http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=pgweb.git;a=summary

Thanks!

Stephen