[gopher] Re: This mailing list

[Mateusz Viste <mateusz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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On Friday 14 August 2009 14:46 (CEST), John Goerzen wrote:
>  * We have no control over who posts, subscribes, or participates

Nope, that's the whole concept of USENET...
On the other hand, it's not so hard to put a NNTP server with 
password-protected accounts.

>  * There is no way to moderate or ban troublemakers

See above. That's USENET. Banning is done locally through the KillFile of every 
reader.
Of course, on a authentication-aware NNTP server, it's easy to ban anyone.
Even more - it's even possible to, say, give read access to everyone without 
authentication, and write access to only registered people...
Anyway, if you ask me, I would say that any kind of "registration" is a bad 
thing. That's why a like USENET so much :)

>  * There is no way to subscribe and get full emails of every post like
> there is with a regular Google Group (digest or "summaries" only)

It's up to you. If you want to use your real mail on NNTP, nobody prevents you. 
The difference between that and a mailing list is that via NNTP you have the 
choice.

>  * There is no way to control what goes on the group's home page

Hey, NNTP and HTTP are two different things :)
You may create any homepage you like.

>  * There is no way to obtain a subsriber list if we want to migrate
> elsewhere

If we would migrate elsewhere, it's enough to post an annoucement about the 
moving few weeks before, to give the time to anybody to get the notification 
before it's done. I see no problem there.

>  * There is no way to load our existing subscriber list into the group

What do you mean by "load our existing subscribers"?

>  * I am not certain whether you can post via email to a Usenet Google
> Group; if you can, it certainly wasn't very obvious.

You use any kind of NNTP client for that. However, some email clients (like 
Outlook) comes with NNTP support as well.

> This group is actually available via a bidirectional NNTP gateway from
> Gmane; see http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.network.gopher.general for
> details.  This arrangement has been in place for some years and I would
> expect it to continue.

Wow, that's cool! Too bad I know about that only now :-P

> I'm not sure it would buy is much anyway; Usenet is waning in popularity
> as a discussion forum and many ISPs don't carry it anymore anyhow.

ISPs doesn't have to carry it. I pay my ISP to provide me an internet link, not 
for getting me a NNTP account / email address / whatever.

Best regards,
Mateusz Viste
- -- 
You'll find my public OpenPGP key at http://www.viste-family.net/mateusz/pub_key
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