> No but those in need of help does. And those ppl who are capable of helping > them are usually busy. Do they keep a browser open and refresh the forum > frequently? I'll answer that question: no.
Many forums packages have the ability to distribute the discussion as a mailing list as well (Yahoo! Groups being one). You dont need to lose your mailing list functionality. > >The NNTP mirror is actually a double-edged sword - yes it takes care of > >archiving and searching (via Google Groups), I will agree, but it misleads > >infrequent users into thinking posting actually does something meaningful. > > Why don't you build a better one? Why not just make is RW? > IIRC sendmail list has both posting via NNTP and mailinglist. Helpful for only those who know about it (few). > >-Easily break discussion into sub-categories (especially for MySQL, where > >SQL questions are combined with everything else, would be nice to break that > >out) > > PHP has several different lists and most questions end up on the general > list. Usually cross-posted to other lists. Why do I have to go to different places for different features of the same forum? > >SourceForge is a great idea, but a poorly designed system. > >Obviously a package designed by an engineer, its a mess. > > You seem to be a brilliant coder so..perhaps you can re-design sourceforge > and the underlaying code. Anyway, I expect an announcement from you real > soon that you created a mail to NNTP gateway for this list.. You are going > to build that.. right? If DataKonsult would bless it and offer to host it, I would write a SMTP<->NNTP gateway, sure. I have written a good deal of USENET software, including a newsreader, so you probably baited the wrong programmer. That's not exactly a rocket science project for a decent perl programmer. I would rather just have the group made read-write and write a proxy for mailing list fans, because I know if I did this the mailing list would fall out of favor anyway (although it would still be there for diehards). As far as SourceForge goes - I'm not a bad coder, but I'm definitely good enough to know when to employ the help of a human interface designer before I spend a few months writing code. A lot of engineers, lacking a project manager, feel that they can handle design just because they are good coders. This is rarely true. A review of the range of quality of X-based application interfaces, regardless of the power of the application, is indicative of this. Again, no reason to be combative here, all I am suggesting is making a web or usenet home to make MySQL help more accessable. I know you want to argue that anyone who uses MySQL should know how the mailing lists and its various mirrors work, but in fact it is confusing and bothersome to many people if not you personally. I've worked with MySQL for about 7 years and have never found it convenient. -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
