[Zope] Could we migrate Zope email to a news group?

Ken Manheimer klm@digicool.com
Thu, 6 May 1999 10:25:23 -0400


On thursday, a dragon wrote:

> Martijn Pieters wrote:
> 
> > I think I could live with a NNTP solution, provided it is a
_three_-way 
> > solution: mail/news/web. I have build such systems, based upon Perl,

> > majordomo, Netscape News Server and MHonArc 
> > (http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/mhonarc.html). Sorry about the
Perl, I 
> > am a multi-linguist.
> 
> 	Actually, there already is such a thing, and Digicool is alredy
> using it! The MailMan list software has web archiving and a newsgroup
> gateway build in!

Yes - implementing the gateway is not the issue.  (Though i haven't
messed much with the mailman mail/news gateway, and it sounds from barry
warsaw's reports that there's a bit of finagling to be done - it is
quite doable.)  The issue is whether or not to do it, and when.  My view
is that it's probably a good idea.  And we at dc won't be able to do
anything about it for another few weeks.

Like i say, i'm leaning towards likeing a coupled mailing list/newsgroup
We'd be opening the audience beyond the folks that have enough interest
in zope to go out of their way to subscribe to the maling list, which is
a good and a bad thing.  We'd reach appropriate folks we otherwise might
not, and we'd also reach inappropriate folks we otherwise might not.
Along these lines, ty sarna wrote:

> In order to be archived on Dejanews, I believe it would have to be
> distributed along with the rest of USENET. The problem with this is
that
> it opens the forum up to spamming, off-topic threads, and all sorts of
> other junk. If there was a comp.infosystems.zope, or what have you,
the
> volume would probably rise tenfold overnight, with most of it being
> completely irrelevant.

My only recent experience with usenet news is comp.lang.python - and
though i can't regularly keep up with it, i don't find much to be off
topic.  (The occasional flame fests are obnoxious, but not completely
off topic...-)  My inclination is to gateway the zope@zope.org list,
leaving zope-dev@zope.org for the hardcore folk.

Someone wrote:

|> As an ex-newsmaster, the idea of relying entirely 
|> upon USENET scares the willies out of me.

This is one reason to use a gateway, so people have a choice.  We'd be
keeping both the current mailing lists as mailing lists - just possibly
extending the zope@zope.org to also be accessible as a newsgroup.

I haven't looked at the news hierarchies recently, so i'm not sure
offhand where zope would best fit.  comp.infosystems?  Suggestions?

In any case, in the short term we at dc (i keep wanting to say
"digicool"-) are locked into development for the linux expo, so we won't
be able to do anything until a bit after that happens (may 19-21).