[arch-general] Arch mailing list for subjective discussions

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 2013-05-19 at 05:25 +0200, Bardur Arantsson wrote:
> a) Use a mail reader which can actually handle a larger mail volume more
> sanely. (Filters, or a mail reader which can "kill" threads so that you
> don't receive future replies on a given thread, etc.)
> 
> b) Use Gmane.org to give you an NNTP interface to mailing lists and use
> a news reader -- high-volume lists is what NTTP and news readers were
> meant for. (I'm using Thunderbird.) It's trivial to set up and
> effortlessly lets you follow along in lots and lots of mailing lists
> without having to set up any mail client magic.

Ok, this time I won't reply off-list.

Remember the systemd flame war. Some discussions simply don't belong to
Arch general. Even some questions don't belong to this list, e.g. "How
can I use dd to backup my Windows?", "Can anybody recommend a good USB
coffee cup warming plate?".

A _user_ mailing list for similar questions and subjective discussions
_must_ be separated from Arch general.

> > On the other side, a forum allows you to focus on the discussions you
> > really care about, and you can just ignore the irrelevant threads.
> 
> You still have to actively go to the specific Arch forums to keep up
> with replies, etc. There's no unified "show me everything new in all the
> forums I'm a member of" page where I can go to keep up.
> 
> That's a much bigger problem for many mail-oriented users than setting
> up a filter or two.

Setting up filters is a good idea, when having a _user_ list with
threads that don't belong to Arch general.

When using a forum, you can't easily post using a MUA, you need to use
the online form.

For good reasons Arch general is a moderated list. If you take a look at
the archive, you can see the advantage. The disadvantage is, that for
dumb questions a user list is missing, but users sometimes need to ask
dumb questions, take a look at e.g. Ubuntu or Debian mailing lists.

Regards,
Ralf