[Prev][Next][Index]

APD and/or rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants?



I already told Shaji about my preference for the mailing list, but I'll point
it out here too.

I'd like to see a 2-way gate between APD and r.a.f.p. 

I arrived at this preference based on the following observations:

* There are APD subscribers who prefer the newsgroup forum and will unsubscribe
  from APD.

* There are APD subscribers who can't get to the newsgroups (I'm thinking of 
  Charley Bay, in-particular, but he's by no means the only one).

* A one-way gate from the mailing list to the newsgroup might affect the 
  newsgroup in the way the killies mailing list affects that newsgroup. IMO,
the
  alt.aqauria.killies newsgroup is pretty much dead, because newcomers either
  get frustrated from getting no responses or they wind up joining and posting
  solely on the mailing list, and not following the newsgroup at all.  There
  are a few exceptions (Wright is a notable one), but I don't think there are
  enough to ensure viability of the newsgroup if the gate were to fail.

* A one-way gate from the newsgroup to the mailing list is still a one-way gate
  and doesn't provide the interaction of either a newsgroup or a mailing list.
  The mailing list winds up getting all of the off-topic junk from the
newsgroup
  but doesn't get to reply to the newsgroup.

I feel like a two-way gate would provide the mailing list users and the
newsgroup users with equal amounts of information.  Unfortunately, the mailing
list users would have the extra work of sorting through the entire postings
while the newsgroup users would have an easier way of scanning the information.
Anti-spam filters could be added to the gateway software to prevent obvious
trash from getting included in the mailing list.

I recognize that doing this would involve quite a bit of work, and that the
mailing list might be overloaded by newsgroup traffic in the near future.  I
think that at this time, Shaji's intent to sit back and wait a few weeks is a
very good idea.

Until I can get all of the information in one place, I will probably stay
subscribed to both the APD and the new newsgroup.

David W. Webb
Enterprise Computing Provisioning
Texas Instruments Inc. Dallas, TX USA
(214) 575-3443 (voice)  MSGID:       DAWB
(214) 575-4853 (fax)    Internet:    dwebb at ti_com
(214) 581-2380 (pager)  Text Pager:  pgr at ti_com Subj:PAGE:David Webb