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Re: [Asrg] SMTP & NNTP ?

2003-03-19 09:43:33

On Wednesday, March 19, 2003, at 07:48  AM, Chris Lewis wrote:

True. Usenet is probably the best way to distribute high volume mailing lists. Because, that is in effect what a newsgroup _is_.

I don't agree.

But you find out that the Usenet broadcast medium mechanism only works when the traffic is of interest to a "significant" fraction of the population so that the bandwidth is amortised over more users. A mailing list with only 5 members is grossly inefficient use of Usenet.

the "send every byte everywhere in case anyone anywhere wants that byte" isn't a good paradigm except in cashes where the value of "anyone" is large. I think it's more tied to the size of the audience than the busyness of the list. USENET is also best for discussion, not distribution of read-only material (i.e. announce, e-marketing, etc). And authentication, spam and trolls are still issues (while spam on usenet may be more or less under control, spam aimed at email found on usenet isn't, making discussion lists on usenet problematic because you're gutting the ability to move discussions private)

then you add the problem that people use mail lists because they want e-mail, not usenet. I've done some experimentation with encouraging mail list users to other formats, and they've generally failed miserably. They're comfortable with it, they don't want to change. And some stuff will (and should) stay behind, so you start getting confusion about what's where, and what ought to go where.

I think the real future direction here is to supplement mail lists with alternative distribution mechanisms, not replace them. Making sure archives are on the web allows users to read lists without having them e-mailed to them; RSS feeds gives them the info they need to know what needs to be read without time wasted browsing. you turn a push/email list into a pull/RSS list without screwing it up for people who want it in the mailbox, but cut the e-mail traffic and the interruptions of mail dropping into the mailbox. The piece that is still somewhat missing on that, though, is posting back from an RSS feed, but you can work around that, and RSS is of most interest to the 'lurkers' in many cases, anyway...

I think forums and other web systems will start taking this content, too, as they continue to mature; especially the ones with multiple distribution methods that understand that content isn't tied to a distribution method, but to a user preference on receiving it.

In my view, announce-based content will likely stay e-mail as it's primarily a push paradigm anyway, although it ought to have an RSS function as well, while discussion content will move to the web, where users have a suite of delivery options, including email, web, or RSS and maybe NNTP -- e-mail isn't the thing, but one delivery tool for the thing.

FWIW, IMHO.




--
Chuq Von Rospach, Architech
chuqui(_at_)plaidworks(_dot_)com -- http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/


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