Comments on: A grumble about Yahoogroups

By: MJR/slef

MJR/slef — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 12:57:34 +0000

@Andy - reply-to should not be touched. People should use good mail clients which support mailing lists well and can do a list-reply based on the List-Post header if desired, as well as the normal reply and reply-to-all. It should be the user’s choice which reply to make: the list server should not try to make reply-to-author difficult by subverting Reply-To or using non-standard headers like Mail-Followup-To.

@Frankie Roberto - qmail is not open source in the OSI sense, last I checked. You cannot improve it and share the improved version. As a result, there are many qmail servers running with the totally inappropriate default messages, like the “Failure Notice” used entertainingly in http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2005/4/12wayne.html

Exim, Postfix and Sendmail seem to be better choices - all will support most of the mailing list software.

By: Joitske

Joitske — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:54:19 +0000

What I did is add groups with RSS (like the online facilitation) to my aggregator. That reduces email and through the heading (interesting or not) I can decide to read or not. I think that’s just perfect! Only not all groups do have RSS I believe. (have to check)

By: Frankie Roberto

Frankie Roberto — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:58:27 +0000

Would be interested to see if you could get an open-source e-mail list server set up (have you got a virtual server yet?).

QMail seems to be the general open-source mail server of choice, but I’m not sure if it can handle discussion lists…

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:22:49 +0000

MJR - thanks for the comment and particularly the suggestions for free list-hosting services.

I don’t agree with you about the default reply-to group though. In my experience reply-to sender tends to kills off group conversations and encourage low volume announcement type lists rather than extended many-to-many threads.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:18:00 +0000

Ah thanks for the tip, Nancy. I’ve never opted in to HTML emails, but found a preference and have now changed from “Fully featured” to “Traditional” LOL, so I’ll see how that goes and maybe post another screenshot.

By: MJR/slef

MJR/slef — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:16:38 +0000

Last I checked, YahooGroups was bad because it sets Reply-To to the list (breaking good email client reply commands), it wants write access to your web browser before you can view archives, and you have to give personal data to Yahoo before you can download files or take part in polls.

Last I checked, GoogleGroups was bad because it tries its hardest to make you give google your personal data and it bans entire top-level-domains like .coop from their lists.

There are many free list-hosting services out there (such as freelists.org for technology, or riseup.net for radical social change), and some mailing list packages easier to set up right than Mailman. There’s really little incentive to use services like YahooGroups and GoogleGroups which do this simple thing badly.

By: Nancy White

Nancy White — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:52:54 +0000

Here’s a little hint that reduces, but does not do away with the ads. In your preferences in Yahoogroups ALWAYS specify text email, not HTML. You get a lot fewer ads. I’m always surprised to see screenshots like yours, because it is very different from what I see. In fact most times I get no ads!