[swift-evolution] [Discussion] mailing list alternative

[Daniel Duan]

I’ve been wondering about this for a while. What heuristic does mailman use to group emails? It this really impossible even if the title, email body, recipient all fits as if it’s from a existing subscriber?

> On Feb 6, 2017, at 4:12 PM, Xiaodi Wu <xiaodi.wu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> No, as you define it, they're not mutually exclusive. But maintaining the option to reply to a thread at an indeterminate point in the future when you finally get around to reading _is_ essentially mutually exclusive to not storing a copy of every email sent to the mailing list on your email account somewhere.
> 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 18:04 Daniel Duan <daniel at duan.org <mailto:daniel at duan.org>> wrote:
>> On Feb 6, 2017, at 3:43 PM, Xiaodi Wu <xiaodi.wu at gmail.com <mailto:xiaodi.wu at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Agree strongly.
>> 
>> It is true, however, that a major pain point of the mailing list format is that it is not apparent how to join an ongoing thread unless you are already subscribed to the list. Thus, an occasional contributor must choose between subscribing and setting up dedicated filters for Swift mailing lists or be content only to initiate new conversations. If we could only overcome that issue, it'd be a huge step forward.
> 
> Subscribing and only-occasionally reading/sending is not mutually exclusive though. One only needs to filter emails from a list to a folder. Most email provider/client combos handle this nicely. Once subscribed, one can retroactively participate any thread. As for threads pre-subscription, I don’t mind starting a new thread (note this happens in forums for other reasons, too).
> 
> (I can see an O’Rly book titled “Advanced Mailing List” in my mind right now 😅).
> 
>> On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 17:24 Daniel Duan via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>> On Feb 6, 2017, at 3:02 PM, Chris Hanson via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Feb 2, 2017, at 2:24 PM, James Berry via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Speaking for myself only, discourse seems to give me little of value, while it would plaster emails with html-laden buttons, etc, thus making my favored experience worse than it is today. I’m fairly happy with using a gmail account and server-side filters to file my swift-evolution mails into a mailbox that I can then read on or offline with the threaded email client of my choice.
>>> 
>>> This is my feeling as well. I also looked at the so-called “native app” for Discourse and it looked like just a wrapper around the web site. It wasn’t nearly the level of experience that I get from a high quality mail client like Mail.app or GMail.
>>> 
>>> I would be all for a forum-like web interface to the mailing list for people who find mailing lists somehow lacking or who have difficulty configuring filters. However, I would be opposed in the strongest possible terms to anything that makes the mailing list interface any sort of second-class citizen, which is definitely what it appears switching to something like Discourse would do.
>>> 
>> 
>> With regard to threading:
>> 
>> I’d encourage those who want web forums to give Mail.app a try. It does a remarkable job of keeping emails threaded. (incidentally, I’ve tried a few 3rd party email clients, the usual suspects with both iOS and macOS support, and find them *worse* at handling mailing list style email chains). There’s even more flexibility in the reading experience with things like Mutt where everything is customizable. 
>> 
>> Overall, I feel like the maturity of email tooling is not emphasized enough here.
>> 
>>>   -- Chris
>>>   -- who would also be opposed to using something like HipChat/Slack over IRC
>>> 
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