Why mailing lists for project collaboration?

views:

335

answers:

+14 Q:

Why mailing lists for project collaboration?

I've noticed that a number of open source projects continue to use mailing lists in lieu of forums. I've personally found mailing lists to be cumbersome and unsearchable, making it harder to solve/discuss technical problems with projects employing them. Am I missing some inherit advantage to mailing lists or are they anachronistic?

Just to clarify, this isn't a "what good are mailing lists in general" question. I've just noticed that they are quite commonly used for software development projects whereas the rest of the internet seems to have moved on. So what is so good about employing mailing lists for software development?

+11 A:

Mailing lists are far better than forums if you follow multiple ones because they are push technology. If I care about N different projects, I can subscribe to N different mailing lists and have all the information in my mailbox, or I can go to N different forums that require N different logins and nearly N different interfaces.

One of the commenters suggested that with some web fora allow you to get an email notification when activity happens, and another suggested RSS feeds. To me, that's trying to re-invent a wheel that's already been invented, only you can't decide how many corners to put on it. So you're suggesting that rather than having all the conversations I'm interested delivered to my inbox where I can ignore or reply to them directly, I get an email or RSS feeder notification that there is an update, and then I can go log into all those different web fora and read or reply to them there? How is that an improvement?

Paul Tomblin 2009-03-09 13:32:22

To play devil's advocate, a good forum system will have the benefits of push technology as well, making it easy to choose which threads you want to be notified of replies in, and which you don't. A mailing list doesn't tend to let you opt-in and opt-out on a per-thread basis.

thomasrutter 2009-03-09 13:38:59

I see your point Paul, but in a world of RSS feeds, coupled with thomas' points, I don't know if I am convinced.

James McMahon 2009-03-09 13:46:49

@thomas, maybe you'd rather get an email saying that somebody replied to your forum post so you can log into the forum and reply to it. Me, I'd rather get the actual reply emailed to me so I could read and reply to it right there.

Paul Tomblin 2009-03-09 13:54:04

Why answer -and- close?

Andy Mikula 2009-03-09 19:23:21

@Andy, because I changed my mind about whether it belongs here after I answered it.

Paul Tomblin 2009-03-09 19:28:43

@paul: Seems to me that you should wiki your answer then.

Geoffrey Chetwood 2009-03-09 19:49:00

Paul I assume you have a mailbox set exclusively for mailing list material? That might be my issue. If I am using a list from work, I am limited to just my work address, which already receives a significant amount of mail without being added to a mailing list.

James McMahon 2009-03-10 15:07:10

Actually, I use gmail, and I have all my mailing lists (and there are a lot of them) sent into different "labels" and not appear in the inbox. Before that, I used procmail and mail folders. Either way, I have the flexibility to deal with them when I want to deal with them.

Paul Tomblin 2009-03-10 15:12:17

Well the nice thing with gmail is that you have tons of space. I don't know how you handle the throughput on a smaller mailbox.

James McMahon 2009-03-10 16:08:53

When I had it stored on my home server, I was upgrading disks every few years, which grew at a faster rate than my Mail directory did. Currently I have 200Gb for /home/, and I'm only using about 50Gb of it.

Paul Tomblin 2009-03-10 16:46:30

@Paul, the real problem for me lies in finding the information after it's been posted. Unless you've been keeping up with a mail list the entire time, I find, even with sites out there keep archives of mailing lists, that mailing lists are difficult to search through.

James McMahon 2009-04-29 15:32:24

@nemo, maybe your experience is different, but I don't find the search functions on most web fora very easy to use either.

Paul Tomblin 2009-04-29 17:16:24

+2 A:

Now that I've seen how well SO works, I think both mailing lists and forums should close up shop and carry on under their favorite SO tag.

Arnold Spence 2009-03-10 00:36:30

Ha, not a bad idea.

James McMahon 2009-03-10 15:04:24

But there are activities common to forums and mailing lists that would not fall strictly into a programming question/answer format so I guess we'll have to wait for stackoverforums.com :)

Arnold Spence 2009-03-10 15:35:44

+1 A:

Because you can follow them by checking your e-mail in the morning.

Adam Jaskiewicz 2009-04-29 15:38:58

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

Why mailing lists for project collaboration?

related questions