5 ms·

This is a common refrain, mailing lists do need a lot of instructions at the bottom to make sense — email wasn't made for groups. It's like 'group' SMS, your ph

This is a common refrain, mailing lists do need a lot of instructions at the bottom to make sense — email wasn't made for groups. It's like 'group' SMS, your phone might provide you with a single chat window with all your friends, but what it really is doing is just sending a separate SMS to every one of the recipients. So you need the 'the manual' attached to every message to make sure people get it right. Looks downright scary sometimes though, especially the prospect of getting swiped at by UNIX greybeards if you do it wrong. Incidentally, I'm working on a modern version of this whole page in a Reddit-like interface. (https://aether.app https://aether.app) It doesn't solve all of the pains of listserv, but it does help with most, including this one you mentioned.

u801e 7y ago
> email wasn't made for groups I've always wondered why people didn't use newsgroups instead of mailing lists.
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  It's likely a combination of bad UX, complex set-up, flaky delivery and having no great interface to manage the groups, memberships, unsubscribes. At least that's the parts we're trying to fix.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  "Any sufficiently complicated group communication system contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Usenet."
  - rolleiflex 7y ago
    I wish. Over Microsoft Teams, I would take that any day of the week.
    - yellowapple 7y ago
      Like I said: "bug-ridden, slow" :)
  - pfarrell 7y ago
    uhh... including Usenet? hmm.. Looks like the Morris Corollary won't work on this version.
- tedmiston 7y ago
  Google Groups (kinda) solves this problem. On the viewing side, the app is pretty decent, and then you can still receive / reply through email if desired. A good example group - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tiddlywikidev https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tiddlywikidev I wish Apache projects would move more towards something like this.
  - swiley 7y ago
    Google groups is freaking awful! It actually was decent in the beginning but with each change google broke more features and made the UI far less usable. Not to mention, you force anyone you want in your group to create a google account.
jachee 7y ago
> It's like 'group' SMS, your phone might provide you with a single chat window with all your friends, but what it really is doing is just sending a separate SMS to every one of the recipients. Most modern phones use MMS Group messaging for groups larger than two. It's more efficient and flexible than SMS.
gaius_baltar 7y ago
> Incidentally, I'm working on a modern version of this whole page in a Reddit-like interface. (https://aether.app https://aether.app) It doesn't solve all of the pains of listserv, but it does help with most, including this one you mentioned. > Try for free for 14 days No.

u801e 7y ago

> email wasn't made for groups I've always wondered why people didn't use newsgroups instead of mailing lists.

rolleiflex 7y ago
It's likely a combination of bad UX, complex set-up, flaky delivery and having no great interface to manage the groups, memberships, unsubscribes. At least that's the parts we're trying to fix.
yellowapple 7y ago
"Any sufficiently complicated group communication system contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Usenet."
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  I wish. Over Microsoft Teams, I would take that any day of the week.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    Like I said: "bug-ridden, slow" :)
- pfarrell 7y ago
  uhh... including Usenet? hmm.. Looks like the Morris Corollary won't work on this version.
tedmiston 7y ago
Google Groups (kinda) solves this problem. On the viewing side, the app is pretty decent, and then you can still receive / reply through email if desired. A good example group - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tiddlywikidev https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tiddlywikidev I wish Apache projects would move more towards something like this.
- swiley 7y ago
  Google groups is freaking awful! It actually was decent in the beginning but with each change google broke more features and made the UI far less usable. Not to mention, you force anyone you want in your group to create a google account.

jachee 7y ago

> It's like 'group' SMS, your phone might provide you with a single chat window with all your friends, but what it really is doing is just sending a separate SMS to every one of the recipients. Most modern phones use MMS Group messaging for groups larger than two. It's more efficient and flexible than SMS.

gaius_baltar 7y ago

> Incidentally, I'm working on a modern version of this whole page in a Reddit-like interface. (https://aether.app https://aether.app) It doesn't solve all of the pains of listserv, but it does help with most, including this one you mentioned. > Try for free for 14 days No.