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Can't agree more Email works O.K for one-way communication (e.g. mailing lists or bill notification). Maybe sometimes infrequent one on one communcation When

Can't agree more Email works O.K for one-way communication (e.g. mailing lists or bill notification). Maybe sometimes infrequent one on one communcation When its comes to having a converstation, particularly with multiple people, I can't think of anything worse. I always dread tracking down information when I have to dig into achived mailing lists

tomjen3 5y ago
Thats funny, because I hate facebook message threads because it is effectively impossible to have a conversation there because everything overlaps and I can't take the time to write something clear and in multiple paragraphs. Honestly at this point I wonder if the right solution is a private usenet server: just like email it is not instant but async, unlike email it is spilt into topics better and you can have new people catch up on threads easily.
- u801e 5y ago
  > I hate facebook message threads because it is effectively impossible to have a conversation there because everything overlaps and I can't take the time to write something clear and in multiple paragraphs. I've actually adopted some email like conventions when participating in Facebook comment threads. When I click the reply button, it will fill in the name of the author of the comment I'm replying to. I then will append "wrote:" to that line, add a line break, type a > character, and then paste the part of the comment they wrote that I plan to respond to. It almost looks like a quoted email message :) > I wonder if the right solution is a private usenet server: just like email it is not instant but async, unlike email it is spilt into topics better and you can have new people catch up on threads easily. With a private NNTP server, you will still need to set up accounts for others to use it. Though if multiple people run their own servers and set up the peering arrangements between then, then it could work without having to set up accounts fro multiple people. But, the flexibility one can get with email in terms of organizing messages into different folders is lost with NNTP, since that organization is determined by the configuration on the server itself.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    I guess you are right on that one, my thoughts were drifting more towards a corporate environment. I also love your Facebook maners, but, unfortunately I haven't met anybody who does that.
u801e 5y ago
> When its comes to having a converstation, particularly with multiple people, I can't think of anything worse. I always dread tracking down information when I have to dig into achived mailing lists This is one aspect where newsgroups do better than email. But, unlike email, you need to establish peering arrangements with other NNTP servers (if you run your own). Wtih email, the MTA can rely on DNS MX records to route the message to the correct server.
gspr 5y ago
> When its comes to having a converstation, particularly with multiple people, I can't think of anything worse. I always dread tracking down information when I have to dig into achived mailing lists Can you give an example of a communication medium — where having a conversation involves multiple different people over the course of weeks or months, with message frequencies varying from several-per-minute to a-few-per-month, and message sizes varying from single sentences to essays — works better than e-mail (and e-mail lists)? I agree that unwinding a sprawling email thread after the fact can be a lot of work, but I also haven't seen any other medium make that job any easier. It seems to me to be an inherently hard problem.

tomjen3 5y ago

Thats funny, because I hate facebook message threads because it is effectively impossible to have a conversation there because everything overlaps and I can't take the time to write something clear and in multiple paragraphs. Honestly at this point I wonder if the right solution is a private usenet server: just like email it is not instant but async, unlike email it is spilt into topics better and you can have new people catch up on threads easily.

u801e 5y ago
> I hate facebook message threads because it is effectively impossible to have a conversation there because everything overlaps and I can't take the time to write something clear and in multiple paragraphs. I've actually adopted some email like conventions when participating in Facebook comment threads. When I click the reply button, it will fill in the name of the author of the comment I'm replying to. I then will append "wrote:" to that line, add a line break, type a > character, and then paste the part of the comment they wrote that I plan to respond to. It almost looks like a quoted email message :) > I wonder if the right solution is a private usenet server: just like email it is not instant but async, unlike email it is spilt into topics better and you can have new people catch up on threads easily. With a private NNTP server, you will still need to set up accounts for others to use it. Though if multiple people run their own servers and set up the peering arrangements between then, then it could work without having to set up accounts fro multiple people. But, the flexibility one can get with email in terms of organizing messages into different folders is lost with NNTP, since that organization is determined by the configuration on the server itself.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I guess you are right on that one, my thoughts were drifting more towards a corporate environment. I also love your Facebook maners, but, unfortunately I haven't met anybody who does that.

u801e 5y ago

> When its comes to having a converstation, particularly with multiple people, I can't think of anything worse. I always dread tracking down information when I have to dig into achived mailing lists This is one aspect where newsgroups do better than email. But, unlike email, you need to establish peering arrangements with other NNTP servers (if you run your own). Wtih email, the MTA can rely on DNS MX records to route the message to the correct server.

gspr 5y ago

> When its comes to having a converstation, particularly with multiple people, I can't think of anything worse. I always dread tracking down information when I have to dig into achived mailing lists Can you give an example of a communication medium — where having a conversation involves multiple different people over the course of weeks or months, with message frequencies varying from several-per-minute to a-few-per-month, and message sizes varying from single sentences to essays — works better than e-mail (and e-mail lists)? I agree that unwinding a sprawling email thread after the fact can be a lot of work, but I also haven't seen any other medium make that job any easier. It seems to me to be an inherently hard problem.