Respecting Privacy: How To Prevent Spam

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 1 May 2014 10:31:36 +0700, Olivier Nicole wrote:
> I beg to disagree, to me, nothing is worth a mailing list, and
> certainly not a forum: I see myself reading and replying to messages
> in a list that I would not even open in a forum. Plus it all comes to
> a single place/tool/interface while each forum has a different
> behaviour.

Additionally, the use of mail offers other advantages:

1. You're not tied to using a web browser. You can use your MUA
   of choice, be it a full-blown GUI client or something you access
   in a terminal. You can even use more than one. You can even
   have an external editor of choice.

2. You can remotely accesss text mode MUAs via SSH, which can be
   a big help when you're working in a limited environment.

3. You can store messages locally, it's easy. You can sort them
   according to your preferences. You do not rely on cryptic http
   URLs or have them disappear some time. You control your storage.

4. In addition to the local storage, you can search for content
   locally using your MUA, or _not_ using your MUA! You can process
   messages, held in mbox, MH, or Maildir formats, as you like.

5. Things are text based. You can use your skills to easily format
   text as you want it to be read by others. You don't need to learn
   "formatting macros" for the current "modern" choice of forum or
   board software, and hope that all web browsers render the result
   in the same way.

6. Web forums, like all web based things, may have bugs. There is
   no way the maintainer can entirely make sure that no hacker will
   ever get access to the user database. So the "But is it secure?"
   question can be asked on WWW topics, too.

7. Using a web browser limits your abilities, especially regarding
   the composition of a message (see #1, point 4). It's primarily
   about writing, but also about reading, as well as printing. It
   just doesn't work that good.

8. You can use the infrastructure described for more than one list.
   This unifies the interface and the processes.

9. Mail is bstter suited for "accidentally offline/online" work,
   as in "You're not logged in to the forum, the message you wrote
   has been lost." :-)


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...