Greetings,
* vinny (vinny@xs4all.nl) wrote:
> The thing is; mailinglists are far from userfiendly if you are not
> used to them.
> Even in this thread several people have explained how much work they
> have done to get it
> into a state where they can easily work with it. Can you expect Joe
> Average to do something like that
> if they want to get more involved in PgSQL?
I don't actually feel that it's really all that unreasonable, no. I've
explained that we use mailing lists to a few different groups at
different colleges I've spoken at and while there's been a bit of
grousing from a few individuals, I don't recall anyone not knowing what
a mailing list is or having all that bad of a reaction.
I'll be speaking later this month again at GMU, so I'll make it a point
to discuss it with the group there.
> Now, I'm not saying the mailinglists should go, I'm saying there
> should be an easier way
> to access them. It should be possible to register on the site, post
> a message and read replies,
> without having to subscribe to the list and setup a way of dealing
> with the influx of messages
> that are, for the most post, simply not interesting to the average user.
I don't think there's anyone who is particularly against that idea, but
it's far from trivial to do and to address the possible spam which will
result from that. All of the website code is open-source and
improvements to it would be greatly welcomed, as long as they don't
create a significant increase in the maintenance burden for the pginfra
team.
> I'd love to have an RSS feed that contains only new questions, so I
> can just watch the popup
> on my screen the way I do with the rest of the world, and not have
> to deal with replies to topics that I don't care about anyway.
I don't see any reason, off-hand at least, that this couldn't be
provided. We already provide RSS feeds for other things and it's
reasonably straight-forward. Replying to the RSS feed would require
an email client though, at least for now. Perhaps that could be
integrated into the 'whole mbox' download option though or something
along those lines so you can pull the email/thread into your client
easily to reply.
> And yes, I can probably setup my email to do something like that,
> the point is that I shouldn't have to.
I'm all for improving things and adding automation where it'll help, but
the infrastructure is basically run by volunteers. Making statements
like "I shouldn't have to" isn't the best approach to getting the
changes you'd like to see happen done.
Thanks!
Stephen