On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 07:09, RW<rwmailli...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:16:38 -0700 > John Rudd <jr...@ucsc.edu> wrote: > > >> Personally, when I'm so lightly involved in a message stream that I >> don't want to be subscribed to the entire list, I prefer to use the >> RSS interface to a forum (or, an RSS feed into a forum). Especially >> if the RSS feed only posts 1 message per topic (the lead in message of >> the topic). Then I can skim the topics, pick which ones to dive in to >> or not. Then I can subscribe to updates of a given topic that I like >> (and read them in the forum, or maybe in my email if they send you 1 >> message per update, instead of 1 message per day), or not. If I >> don't, then I _never_ see that topic again. And either way, I don't >> store a flood of messages in my account (not before I read them, not >> after I read them). >> > > I don't see any advantage in doing it that way over using the gmane > news server, and most lists will accept posts from gmane. >
If I still used Thunderbird, sure. I could just click over to News from Mail, and read it that way. But that's not how I read my email these days, nor how I get my "news" (generalized to mean conventional news, nntp, forums, blogs, etc.). I get almost all of my "news" these days via RSS. And I don't use a desktop client for that, I use Google Reader. Besides, usenet/nntp is getting to be a vanishing backwater of the net these days ... and the only _decent_ nntp reader was "nn", which never really made its way to the GUI era, much less the web era. In fact, if you know much about nn, you can probably see that reflected in what I said I prefer in RSS feeds. I only want to see the lead in, and then I have to actively choose to participate in anything more for that stream -- if I pass it by with disinterest, then I never see it again. Just like nn.
