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Re: Mailing list vs. newsgroup

>Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 16:14:00 -0400
>From: Noel Llopis <llopis at zonker_ecs.umass.edu>
>Subject: Mailing list vs. newsgroup
>
>David Webb talks about the APD vs. the newsgroup:
>>I guess I never answered the question posed...  Postings from
>>rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants are not automatically posted on the Aquatic
>>Plants Digest mailing list.  The newsgroup and mailing list are
completely
>>separate.  You must send your post to both places if you want it to show
up
>>in both places.
>
>Which brings the issue of why there is the need to have both.

I have been on the APD since Shaji Bhaskar first started it up.  I was also
very involved in the reorganization of rec.aquaria.*, including the
creation of rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants.  Simply speaking, the newsgroup
tends to contain information in a more simplified form than the APD, and
the APD tends to have more scientific discussion than the newsgroup.

>Why am I reading the mailing list right now? It's more annoying because 
>it comes in the mail, doesn't support threaded discussions, and it's in 
>digest format (a major pain). But it's where the quality discussions 
>take place. 

Many of the "gurus" on APD were on the rec.aquaria newsgroup before the
creation of the APD.  They continued to frequent rec.aquaria through the
reorganization, and frequented r.a.f.p after the reorg.  However, many of
these people decided that they prefer the mailing list digest format over
the newsgroup.

>So why not move over to the newsgroup? Give the list a month
>of life to finish any threads, and just start new ones in the
>newsgroup.

If you wish, you may.  I plan to stay on the mailing list.

>Afraid of spam in the group? Most ISP do very good filtering these
>days, and we'll get little more than in the list. Just look at the
>current r.a.f.p and you'll see it's a very spam-free group. If things
>get worse, we can turn it into a moderated newsgroup. It won't be any
>harder than supporting a mailing list.

This is an incorrect statement.  Most ISP and company email servers filter
absolutely nothing because of the possibility that an important piece of
email might get caught in the filtering program.

>The only reason I can see for maintaining the list (other than inertia,
>which seems a big issue with some folks), is that some people might not
>have news access. That might have been an argument years ago, but not
>really today. If you have web access, you can get to DejaNews or some 
>other free news server.

This is still a very good reason today.  Several members of this list
recieve their email through older mainframe systems that do not support a
news feed, or within a company whose firewall/proxy servers do not allow
newsgroup access.

>So, what do you say, should we jump over to Usenet? 

I, for one, don't plan to.

--
David W. Webb
http://www.dallas.net/~dwebb