Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
John Meacham wrote: There already is an NNTP - mailing list gateway via gmane that gives a nice forumy and threaded web interface for those with insufficient email readers. Adding a completely different interface seems unnecessary and fragmentary. Trouble is, you can't use it like just another NNTP server. If you have a forum powered by NNTP, you can casually throw in a hey, nice one time comment as a reply to part of a thread, and only people interested in that thread have to see your message (or download it, for that matter). If you do that on a mailing list, all 700+ subscribers get a copy of your email. And, usually, they're not very amused about it. With SMTP, you can only really say something if it's really, really worth saying. Otherwise it just gets too noisy. That's the trouble with a mailing list; it's everyone talking to everyone. NNTP has real threading, and a central place where all the messages can be redownloaded from incrimentally, and it doesn't get eaten by your ISP's spam filter, and and and... Still, I know from experience that I am the only person here who appreciates these virtues. Everybody else seems quite happy with a crude SMTP system, so... ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
From my experience once a forum pops up the mailing list dies. -- Mihai Maruseac ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 07:01:45PM +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote: If you have a forum powered by NNTP, you can casually throw in a hey, nice one time comment as a reply to part of a thread, and only people interested in that thread have to see your message (or download it, for that matter). ... Still, I know from experience that I am the only person here who appreciates these virtues. Everybody else seems quite happy with a crude SMTP system, so... IOW, if people use the proper and well known features of NNTP it would be a better world than the one we have were people do not use proper and well known features of SMTP. As it stands, even with SMTP you get people who post new message topics as replies to existing threads, as well as people who *somehow* reply to a thread but do not include In-Reply-To or References headers so threading is broken. I have no reason to think people would not do the same broken things with NNTP, foiling my plans for following some threads and ignoring others. As long as people are sharing opinions, I'll add mine: * If the mailing lists go away I will probably not switch to whatever replaces it. * A list - forum gateway is fine, as long as the message IQ doesn't drop through the floor as a result. This fear comes from personal, anecdotal evidence. YMMV. * No opinion either way on List - NNTP gateway. -- Darrin Chandler| Phoenix BSD User Group | MetaBUG dwchand...@stilyagin.com | http://phxbug.org/ | http://metabug.org/ http://www.stilyagin.com/ | Daemons in the Desert | Global BUG Federation ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
Darrin Chandler wrote: IOW, if people use the proper and well known features of NNTP it would be a better world than the one we have were people do not use proper and well known features of SMTP. SMTP is designed for delivering messages point-to-point. If your email provider incorrectly marks half the list traffic as spam, you can't read it. If your PC dies and you lose all your email, you cannot get it back again. If you hit reply, it only replies to the one person who wrote the message, not to the list. And every person has to download every single message ever sent. Because, let's face it, all a list server does is receive emails and then re-send them to everybody. If your mail system isn't operational at the moment when the email is sent, you'll never receive it and cannot ever get it afterwards. NNTP is designed to deliver list traffic. You can tell your news reader to download messages posted before you joined the group (which is impossible with a mailing list). If your PC dies, you can just re-download all the messages again. Threading actually works properly. You only need download the message bodies that you're actually interested in. And so on. As it stands, even with SMTP you get people who post new message topics as replies to existing threads, as well as people who *somehow* reply to a thread but do not include In-Reply-To or References headers so threading is broken. I have no reason to think people would not do the same broken things with NNTP, foiling my plans for following some threads and ignoring others. I constantly have trouble with this mailing list. Even gmane can't seem to thread it properly. But I've never had any trouble with threading in any NNTP group, ever. [Well, apart from that stupid Thunderbird bug they still haven't fixed yet. But that's a client bug. Use a different client and it goes away.] * If the mailing lists go away I will probably not switch to whatever replaces it. ...nd this is why no matter how superior it is, this list will never get updated. * A list - forum gateway is fine, as long as the message IQ doesn't drop through the floor as a result. This fear comes from personal, anecdotal evidence. YMMV. Uh, why would that happen? I guess if it went to a web forum there'd by a greater danger of that maybe. But heck, we don't have much trouble on IRC, and that's notorious for the kind of trolls it tends to attract... * No opinion either way on List - NNTP gateway. As I say, there already is one. But because 98% of everybody uses this list as an email list, you can't go using it like it's a news group. You'll just get yelled at. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On 2010-07-27 19:59 +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote: Darrin Chandler wrote: IOW, if people use the proper and well known features of NNTP it would be a better world than the one we have were people do not use proper and well known features of SMTP. SMTP is designed for delivering messages point-to-point. If your email provider incorrectly marks half the list traffic as spam, you can't read it. This has nothing to do with SMTP, and everything to do with your email provider being worthless. If your PC dies and you lose all your email, you cannot get it back again. Assuming you've never heard of list archives or backups, sure. If you hit reply, it only replies to the one person who wrote the message, not to the list. Every mail client worth its salt has a 'reply to group' function, which performs as advertised. In fact, I can't even name a single one that does not have this function. And every person has to download every single message ever sent. Because, let's face it, all a list server does is receive emails and then re-send them to everybody. This point is valid, but not really relevant since the advent of DSL. A week's traffic on linux-kernel is about 30 megabytes. Haskell-cafe is about 4. If your mail system isn't operational at the moment when the email is sent, you'll never receive it and cannot ever get it afterwards. This is not an accurate reflection of reality. I constantly have trouble with this mailing list. Even gmane can't seem to thread it properly. But I've never had any trouble with threading in any NNTP group, ever. Mutt seems to have no trouble threading it properly. I haven't encountered an issue with gmane and this list, although admittedly I don't use it often. [Well, apart from that stupid Thunderbird bug they still haven't fixed yet. But that's a client bug. Use a different client and it goes away.] The same can be said about email threading. -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 07:59:40PM +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote: NNTP is ... It's all true. I used nntp extensively in the 90s. I never emo-quit, I just stopped using it over time due to waning ISP support and other reasons made it more of a pain. I have nothing against nntp as a protocol, but I have my reasons for no longer using it. I constantly have trouble with this mailing list. Even gmane can't seem to thread it properly. But I've never had any trouble with threading in any NNTP group, ever. Hmm. I don't see this mailing list as unusual in any way wrt threading, except that most people here actually *do* reply properly, most of the time. * If the mailing lists go away I will probably not switch to whatever replaces it. ...nd this is why no matter how superior it is, this list will never get updated. Pretty much. * A list - forum gateway is fine, as long as the message IQ doesn't drop through the floor as a result. This fear comes from personal, anecdotal evidence. YMMV. Uh, why would that happen? I guess if it went to a web forum there'd by a greater danger of that maybe. But heck, we don't have much trouble on IRC, and that's notorious for the kind of trolls it tends to attract... In my experience, either a web forum is actively maintained and moderated or it becomes a troll magnet. Trolls can live anywhere, but they prefer caves, under bridges, and web forums. People on this list who desire a forum are not the problem, and I certainly don't want to imply that. As for IRC, I think freenode/#haskell has enough quality and quantity to keep the trolls down. I haven't had much troll problems on freenode, though I'm sure others could share some tales. * No opinion either way on List - NNTP gateway. As I say, there already is one. But because 98% of everybody uses this list as an email list, you can't go using it like it's a news group. You'll just get yelled at. I find it surprising that you'd get yelled at, but I don't really know. -- Darrin Chandler| Phoenix BSD User Group | MetaBUG dwchand...@stilyagin.com | http://phxbug.org/ | http://metabug.org/ http://www.stilyagin.com/ | Daemons in the Desert | Global BUG Federation ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
Kevin Jardine kevinjard...@gmail.com writes: On Jul 26, 6:45 pm, Nick Bowler nbow...@elliptictech.com wrote: Since when do mailing lists not have threading? Web forums with proper support for threading seem to be few and far apart. Most of the email clients I'm familiar with don't support threaded displays and most of the web forums I'm familiar with do (although the feature is not always switched on). In my experience the debate between mailing list vs. web forum can become very emotional (especially when discussed via a mailing list) and I don't think it is that productive. Some people like one, some people like the other. That's why I think that it is useful to give people a choice. One problem with creating a Web forum for a topic supported by a community that already chiefly communicates via a mailing list is that cross-referencing/cross-posting can become difficult. Suppose that somebody addresses a topic that has already been introduced on the mailing list on the forum, and that someone on mailing list then sees this topic and wants to respond. Should he/she respond on the mailing list, or the forum? How about follow-ups? What if he/she wishes to restrict follow-ups to either the forum or the mailing list? Conversely, suppose that somebody addresses a topic that has already been introduced on the forum on the mailing list, and that someone on the forum then sees this topic and wants to respond. What then? What happens if the forum users see some of the content as appropriate for the mailing list, but not for the forum? The only viable solution is to have every mailing list post forwarded to the forum and vice-versa, and have a moderator for the forum filter out posts containing content that is deemed inappropriate for the Web. But then this leads to an additional problem: What if some users on the mailing list deem content that has been filtered out by the moderator as appropriate for discussion on both forums, while the forum users consider it as inappropriate it? Consider the following sample discussion (which I just wrote for the purpose of this discussion, but which actually discusses a possible topic), which contains issues of technical terms containing scatological (i.e., dirty) language, multiple levels of indentation, representation of URLs, and article length (please ignore this example if you feel upset by technical terms that contain scatological terms): subject: A Comparison of Whitespace in Haskell and brainfuck I discovered an article (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck) on the brainfuck programming language (not to be confused with the Brain Fuck Scheduler (BFS) (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Fuck_Scheduler)) that introduced a sample Hello World! program: The following program prints Hello World! and a newline to the screen: + + initialize counter (cell #0) to 10 [ use loop to set the next four cells to 70/100/30/10 + ++ add 7 to cell #1 + + add 10 to cell #2 +++ add 3 to cell #3 + add 1 to cell #4 - decrement counter (cell #0) ] ++ . print 'H' + . print 'e' + ++ . print 'l' . print 'l' +++ . print 'o' ++ . print ' ' + + + . print 'W' . print 'o' +++ . print 'r' - - . print 'l' - --- . print 'd' + . print '!' . print '\n' For readability, this code has been spread across many lines and blanks and comments have been added. Brainfuck ignores all characters except the eight commands +-[],. so no special syntax for comments is needed. The code could just as well have been written as: ++[+-]++.+.+++..+++.++.+++..+++.--..+.. By comparison, a corresponding article on Haskell (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_(programming_language)) provided the following Haskell alternative:: The following is a Hello world program written in Haskell (note that except for the last line all lines can be omitted): module Main where main :: IO () main = putStrLn Hello, World! I became curious about the use of whitespace in the brainfuck example, and decided to see if the Haskell code could also be written more compactly. While doing some research on this topic, I discovered a Wikibook article (see http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Indentation) that discussed indentation in Haskell, and discovered that it was indeed entirely possible to write compact code in Haskell, using semicolon[s] to separate things and curly braces to group them back. The following four rules were provided to
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
Nick Bowler nbow...@elliptictech.com writes: On 13:58 Mon 26 Jul , John Meacham wrote: There already is an NNTP - mailing list gateway via gmane that gives a nice forumy and threaded web interface for those with insufficient email readers. Adding a completely different interface seems unnecessary and fragmentary. http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe Ah, I didn't realise the gmane web interface supported followups (I knew the NNTP interface did, and mentioned this elsewhere in this thread). Looks like we've already got a web forum, then, so I guess there's nothing to do! :) Same here. Why don't we just use this interface, which already exists? -- Benjamin L. Russell -- Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/ Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725 Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto. -- Matsuo Basho^ ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
Other topics I am interested in are served by both a web forum and a mailing list, usually with different content and participants in both. In my experience, routing one kind of content to another does not work very well because of issues of spam control, moderation, topic subdivisions, the ability to correct posts, and threading (usually web forums have these things and mailing lists do not). This works well in my view. Those people who prefer more structure and features post in the forum, those who prefer more traditional mailing lists post there, and anyone who wants to keep track of both streams subscribes to the RSS feeds. Personally I prefer web forums. Kevin On Jul 26, 5:03 pm, Magnus Therning mag...@therning.org wrote: On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 15:47, Nick Bowler nbow...@elliptictech.com wrote: On 10:37 Mon 26 Jul , Job Vranish wrote: I agree. A web forum would be more friendly to newcomers, easier to browse, and better organized, than the mailing list. I don't understand this sentiment at all. How are web forums easier to browse than list archives? Especially given that there are usually multiple archives for each ML, with a variety of ways to use them (e.g., I tend to use gmane with my newsreader for this purpose). Irrespective of what is easier to use, what really counts is where the *targets* of your post hang out. Personally I prefer a mailing list, and I would only ever use a forum if I had a better chance of getting good and informative answers there. Another option is to import the entire haskell-cafe archive into gmail :-) Some people will still prefer the mailing list of course, but I think there will be enough demand to justify a forum :) Wine has a web forum that is directly connected to their mailing lists: each post on the forum is sent to the corresponding list and vice versa. The web forum interface doesn't support proper threading, but it otherwise seems to work OK. Perhaps something like that would be useful? This would be a good compromise. /M -- Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4) magnus＠therning．org Jabber: magnus＠therning．orghttp://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list haskell-c...@haskell.orghttp://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On 08:15 Mon 26 Jul , Kevin Jardine wrote: Other topics I am interested in are served by both a web forum and a mailing list, usually with different content and participants in both. In my experience, routing one kind of content to another does not work very well because of issues of spam control, moderation, topic subdivisions, the ability to correct posts, and threading (usually web forums have these things and mailing lists do not). Since when do mailing lists not have threading? Web forums with proper support for threading seem to be few and far apart. -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On Jul 26, 6:45 pm, Nick Bowler nbow...@elliptictech.com wrote: Since when do mailing lists not have threading? Web forums with proper support for threading seem to be few and far apart. Most of the email clients I'm familiar with don't support threaded displays and most of the web forums I'm familiar with do (although the feature is not always switched on). In my experience the debate between mailing list vs. web forum can become very emotional (especially when discussed via a mailing list) and I don't think it is that productive. Some people like one, some people like the other. That's why I think that it is useful to give people a choice. Kevin ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 7/26/10 15:54 , Kevin Jardine wrote: On Jul 26, 6:45 pm, Nick Bowler nbow...@elliptictech.com wrote: Since when do mailing lists not have threading? Web forums with proper support for threading seem to be few and far apart. Most of the email clients I'm familiar with don't support threaded displays and most of the web forums I'm familiar with do (although the feature is not always switched on). This is approximately the reverse of my experience. In particular, I haven't run across a non-threaded email client in something like 10 years. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkxN6l0ACgkQIn7hlCsL25UIQgCfeBNEwNo/IgsJAJ9vJjMIGRfB ypQAnR0KHLmjWh5+P8Jc+frhoAo7PXWU =tp0/ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On Jul 26, 10:10 pm, Evan Laforge qdun...@gmail.com wrote: Interesting, I've never figured out why some people prefer forums, but you're proof that they exist :) This debate is eerily similar to several others I've seen (for example, on the interactive fiction mailing list). In every case I've seen, a web forum vs. mailing list debate has been pointless at best and sometimes turned into a flame war. I think that it's best for people who prefer a web forum to establish one and use it, and for those who prefer the mailing list approach to continue to use that. Cheers, Kevin ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On 13:28 Mon 26 Jul , Kevin Jardine wrote: On Jul 26, 10:10 pm, Evan Laforge qdun...@gmail.com wrote: Interesting, I've never figured out why some people prefer forums, but you're proof that they exist :) This debate is eerily similar to several others I've seen (for example, on the interactive fiction mailing list). In every case I've seen, a web forum vs. mailing list debate has been pointless at best and sometimes turned into a flame war. I think that it's best for people who prefer a web forum to establish one and use it, and for those who prefer the mailing list approach to continue to use that. It seems to me, then, that a wine-like web forum - mailing list gateway would satisfy everyone without fragmenting the community? See http://forum.winehq.org/viewforum.php?f=2. -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On Jul 26, 10:37 pm, Nick Bowler nbow...@elliptictech.com wrote: It seems to me, then, that a wine-like web forum - mailing list gateway would satisfy everyone without fragmenting the community? Seehttp://forum.winehq.org/viewforum.php?f=2. -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list haskell-c...@haskell.orghttp://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On Jul 26, 10:37 pm, Nick Bowler nbow...@elliptictech.com wrote: It seems to me, then, that a wine-like web forum - mailing list gateway would satisfy everyone without fragmenting the community? Definitely looks like an interesting option, although since Google groups and any decent web forum support RSS feeds, I'm not sure that having two different streams of content would fragment the community (any more than the many Haskell-related mailing lists do right now). Cheers, Kevin ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 04:37:45PM -0400, Nick Bowler wrote: On 13:28 Mon 26 Jul , Kevin Jardine wrote: On Jul 26, 10:10 pm, Evan Laforge qdun...@gmail.com wrote: Interesting, I've never figured out why some people prefer forums, but you're proof that they exist :) This debate is eerily similar to several others I've seen (for example, on the interactive fiction mailing list). In every case I've seen, a web forum vs. mailing list debate has been pointless at best and sometimes turned into a flame war. I think that it's best for people who prefer a web forum to establish one and use it, and for those who prefer the mailing list approach to continue to use that. It seems to me, then, that a wine-like web forum - mailing list gateway would satisfy everyone without fragmenting the community? See http://forum.winehq.org/viewforum.php?f=2. There already is an NNTP - mailing list gateway via gmane that gives a nice forumy and threaded web interface for those with insufficient email readers. Adding a completely different interface seems unnecessary and fragmentary. http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe John -- John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈ - http://notanumber.net/ ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On Monday 26 July 2010 22:10:46, Evan Laforge wrote: Apart from threading and attachments, are there other reasons you prefer a forum? I'm a mailing list guy too, but one possible advantage of a forum is that it might be easier to search by topic. Have a problem with type families? Go to the language extensions subforum, then the type families sub- subforum, there you are. If you search a mailing list archive, it's not so easy and you'll likely miss the threads where type families is not in the topic because it's called Need Help! Why won't this compile?. Of course, in reality fora are not so well-structured either :) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Forum
On 13:58 Mon 26 Jul , John Meacham wrote: There already is an NNTP - mailing list gateway via gmane that gives a nice forumy and threaded web interface for those with insufficient email readers. Adding a completely different interface seems unnecessary and fragmentary. http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe Ah, I didn't realise the gmane web interface supported followups (I knew the NNTP interface did, and mentioned this elsewhere in this thread). Looks like we've already got a web forum, then, so I guess there's nothing to do! :) -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/) ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
