Forums vs Mailing Lists

[Shawn McMahon]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 09:56:33PM -0700, Scott said:
> 
> There is also a difference for me because (to make a long story short) I 
> keep all my email messages on my mail server (hosted along with my web 
> site by a company I pay for the services) which seems to get slower as 
> my mailbox grows bigger.

You can make things faster by not keeping it all in one mailbox.  Most
MUAs can split messages out into new "folders" automatically, and pretty
much all can do so manually.

> Also I'm eating my own bandwidth (I have a monthly allotment).

If your bandwidth allotment doesn't meet your needs, you can change your
bandwidth allotment, or change your needs.  Examples of the latter would
include moving your mail server and pulling them off the mail server to
read.

I used to have a setup like what you describe, and I used the hosting
site as my primary MX, then used fetchmail to pull the mail into my home
server for reading.  Although I started this practice when I had dialup
and didn't want to stay connected 24/7, I continued it for months with
broadband.  I only stopped it because it complicated spam filtration
since I didn't have as much control over the MTA on the hosting site.
However, the tools have changed since then, and a different antispam
approach would make this a workable solution again.

The problem with switching to a news server is that many of us subscribe
to many different email lists, and use automated tools to process them.
Moving one list to a news server means two sets of tools, as well as
subtle differences in how things operate, even if you use the same
client for both.  If there were clear, compelling gains, I'd be all
for it, but the gains tend to be user-dependant and offset by losses
for other users.

However, I enjoy being proven wrong, since I come out of the experience
smarter.


-- 
   Shawn McMahon    | Ubuntu: an ancient African word meaning "I am sick
   EIV Consulting   | of compiling Gentoo".
 http://www.eiv.com |                       - Jeff Waugh (paraphrased)
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