[Greasemonkey] testing

[Matthias Bauer]

On 07.06.2006 00:20 Bill Donnelly wrote:

> Yeah. I sent email to "the main people" about it several days ago,
> but maybe they can't do anything. It's probably the server, and/or
> the EXTREMELY outdated mail list software they are using. (circa pre-2000)

You mean Mailman 2.1.2, released 27 Apr 2003?

> We REALLY need to switch to a discussion forum format.
> Especially for the non-techy types, who usually balk at mail lists.
> They wouldn't care about or understand 99.9% of the discussion anyway.
> Whereas in a forum, we could have several sections for all the
> different types of users and areas of discussion.
> 
> Mail Lists are "old-style" anyway, like News Groups, which is all
> they had back in the Old Daze when there was no such thing as
> web discussion forums. Which work very nice now. Even PHPBB.
> And they are always absolutely immediate, which is nice. (no propagation
> delays)

Forums can't really be browsed using standard software - the content is
hidden away in layers and layers of HTML and templates. There is no sane
caching - each time a new entry is added to a thread, the whole page is
invalidated. In the end, they just create lots of traffic and lots of
shiny for little gain. Not to mention the administrative hassles and
upgrade hell, especially with software like phpBB - not extensible, no
real upgrading facility, etc. Web forums are a kludge, and a bad one.

Mailing lists are a lot better, but still not very good. What we should
do is get a newsgroup. Doesn't mozdev offer that?

> Maybe I'll build one and see if "they will come." (but it doesn't really
> make a lot of sense to have the discussions fragmented 'here and there' --
> it really should be an 'all or nothing' decision by 'the powers that be')
> 
> (hell, most forums now-days have a 'notify me by email when people reply
> to posts in this thread' option, so that should satisfy anyone who
> "doesn't like discussion forums", +/-; --- it's better than nothing)

That's just even more needless mail traffic. There are protocols for
these kind of things, and if you must use some web service, at least use
RDF for the forum notifications. I don't know of any major forum
software providing that, though.

In short: web fora are not for me.


-Matt