FreeBSD forum to mailing list

ltsampros

ltsampros

Hello!

Is there any functionality in this forum like forum group/topic to mailing list ? It would be great to be able to read/post to the forums while using a mail reader!

Hope you like the idea!
 
Bad idea and one that's not going to work. SMTP isn't really cut out for this.
 
Agreed. SMTP <-> NNTP gateways are another matter, because they are almost the same media (usually simple ASCII, no lay-out). It's hard enough to get forum members to use
Code: 
 tags and other helpful formatting tools to make their posts look acceptable, let alone getting unformatted stuff through the mail without translation either way.
 
While I agree with both of you that they are different mediums and indeed they are, the actual structure of a forum thread could be viewed as a simplified mail thread. Generalizing a sub-forum could be regarded as a single mailing list.

Regarding the content and the codes of the messages, I'm pretty sure that today's mail readers can actually take care of all the extra formatting added by editors. Either by rendering them through the use of plugins and such or by filtering them out!

The reason I propose something like this, is that although I want to read several forums around the internet, I found the presentation and organization of the information, chaotic. Probably, there are other people too who share my opinion.

Furthermore, the basic functionality of my idea is actually half-implemented, given that someone uses the parameter "Default Thread Subscription Mode" set to 'instant email notification'. Then for every new post in a thread you receive a new mail! Much like a real mailing list thread.

Given time/code and some simplifications, I think it's possible to have a forum to mailing list gateway as an option. I don't know if it's a sought after feature, but if it existed I would certainly use it.

Anyway. Thanks about the insight guys.
 
Forum -> email would probably not be too hard (it's a bit like RSS feeds, which work fine). The other way around (mail -> forum, so participating in a thread using email) would most certainly be a problem -- would having a one-way/read-only forum actually be any fun? Anyway, if the functionality is not present in the forum software, no one's going to implement it locally.
 
Also think about the amount of spam mail->forum would produce :\
 
To see how horrible this would become, just try using the OpenSolaris forums, which are actually mailing lists, but not really, and aren't really forums, and are a pain to follow, and ... and ... and.

Mail <--> News works well. News --> forum-style interface isn't too bad. But Mail <--> Forum rarely works.

Forum --> Mail is fairly simple. But the reverse is not.

<mod hat on>I would oppose a mail gateway for the forum.<mod hat off>
 
You can already do Forum --> Email.

All you have to do is click on a Forum (such as X.org or something) and click Forum Tools | Subscribe to this forum.

Choose if you want daily or weekly updates.

My company uses Jive for their community/forum software (http://community.landesk.com) and the email functionality works as you describe and you can just hit reply and post your email, etc.

Appropriate tags are not often used, but it works out fine anyway.

Usually, people only respond via email for short posts. If they need something long they go to the community forum an use the editor (and still somehow they mess it up).

And I can't say much, I have forgotten to use Code tags twice in the last week.
 
rhyous said:
You can already do Forum --> Email.

All you have to do is click on a Forum (such as X.org or something) and click Forum Tools | Subscribe to this forum.

Choose if you want daily or weekly updates.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that! Digests are not really my preference though but I think it'll do the trick.

I agree with most of you that the Email->Forum seems to be a little more complicated that it sounds. I think that if one was to implement something of the above that would be to have instant email updates of forums through the Forum Tools | Subscribe mechanism described above but that would be pointless without the Forum -> Email part (imho).

However, the second part seems a lot more complicated than it sounds :)

Thanks for your suggestions guys!
 
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