28 ms·

Zed Shaw: Librelist to take on Google, Yahoo mailing lists

173 points by mattculbreth 17y ago

stcredzero 17y ago
This isn’t to say that for-profit companies are bad, it’s just that if they can make money by tracking your behavior and serving you ads, then that will take precedence over giving your project a good user experience. This strikes me as hitting the nail on the head!
- petervandijck 17y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. Making money somehow causes less focus on user experience?
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - zedshaw 17y ago
    Yes, because the primary "user" for a company like Yahoo! or Google is the advertiser, not the mailing list user.
    - stcredzero 17y ago
      And it's not as if they exactly roll out the red carpet for all of their advertising users either. One runs across complaints all the time. So expect to be treated just a little worse than those other guys who make Google & Yahoo money.
    - netcan 17y ago
      The primary "user" for a TV show is the advertiser. Doe that mean they don't care about ratings?
      - viraptor 17y ago
        They do... That's why you will get ads in the middle of the most popular shows. (advertiser's business over user experience again) Ratings are per show, not per channel really.
      - scott_s 17y ago
        The ratings for a show determine how much a network can charge the advertisers for commercial time.
        netcan 17y ago
        Yes that is true. But that isn't the point of the question. The implication of the parent is that since Google (by analogy TV companies) make money from advertising, they have less incentive to take care of users. Ratings determine how much a network can charge the advertisers for commercial time. Ratings are a measure of viewer satisfaction. This isn't coincidental.
        scott_s 17y ago
        The analogy fails because networks have a finite amount of air time to sell every day. Shows with low ratings get dropped. Google and others can literally create advertising space. Applications with relatively low usage cost them little, but they are also unlikely to invest in improving it.
        netcan 17y ago
        Google have an equivalent of limited space.
        stinkytaco 17y ago
        No they don't. They have limited attention, but their space is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. Networks have 24 hours of programming, Google has millions of page views, application users, etc. But, even if something gets very small amounts of attention, it is still incredibly cheap to serve ads (because that's all automated) and, as a result, make money. The user experience only has to be good enough to keep enough people using it that you break even on the infrastructure.
rufo 17y ago
EDIT: Zed just addressed this with some basic plans: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=974744 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=974744 Overall it looks nice. The most interesting/controversial bit to me is the following (taken from librelist.com): Nobody Can Be Taken Off The “libre” in the name means freedom for everyone to discuss their opinions, so nobody will have the right to boot you off or enforce arbitrary “list Nazi” rules simply because you disagree with them. That of course doesn’t mean you should act like a jerk, but the librelist.com philosophy is that healthy communities can survive and need “trolls”.
- nollidge 17y ago
  So it's freedom, just not for the list manager. Can anyone provide a defense (from Zed or anyone) for the idea that a healthy community needs trolls? I can understand the need for dissent and argument, but it seems to me that trolling is categorically different from those.
  - gloob 17y ago
    A not-very-good-but-still-fun argument: Trolls are the predators of internet communities. They prey on the sick, the weak, and the perennially outraged (mostly this last group) and, if they are successful, drive them away from the community. A community without perennially outraged people is better than a community with them. The question is whether this benefit is worth the potential cost, which is probably something that almost entirely dependent on the nature of the community and the personalities of the trolls involved. Edit: By "perennially outraged", I am referring to people who are constantly angry or miserable for no reason other than that such an emotional state is "what they do". They aren't trolls themselves, any more than a particularly unpleasant customer is a troll. They're just constantly unhappy and vocal about it.
    - petervandijck 17y ago
      Trolls drive away the GOOD people, not the weak/sick ones. They're more like a fungus infection than like a predator.
bradgessler 17y ago
Great idea. I've started to smell the "funk" recently around Google Groups; Zed pinned down exactly what it was. This will be a very interesting project moving forward.
whyenot 17y ago
Many systems allow a small minority to tyrannically control the group, applying censorship where nobody actually wants it. Many systems may allow this behavior, but that doesn't mean it actually happens. At least I've never personally encountered it on a mailing list. Is it really that big a problem? On the other hand, maybe the current state of comp.lang.lisp is a good example of what a mailing list with no moderation might look like. There are still good conversations, but there is so much spam and trolling that I don't bother reading it anymore -- it took too much work to sift through all the junk. Even worse, the trolls create an environment that is not exactly inviting to new users.
AndrewWarner 17y ago
I created a Hacker News list so we can test it out. hackernews@librelist.com will let you see it. Glad he's taking on the neglected lists @ google & yahoo.
gojomo 17y ago
They make you log in just to see archives, which ruins any promotional and educational value your archives have. That's not exactly true. At Yahoo, I believe this is up to the list owner. (I know my most active list there allows viewing of archives without logging in.) At Google, it's weirder: if you're not logged into Google at all, you can often view the archives without being prompted for a login. But if you are logged into Google elsewhere, they demand you either reconfirm your login with Groups, or logout entirely, before allowing you to view to the archives. (That's still a problem -- enough of an annoyance in fact that I wouldn't consider hosting any more groups there until it's fixed. But it seems mainly an eccentricity of their cross-site login policies, and does still offer a route to non-logged-in viewing.)
philipn 17y ago
Folks, if you're looking for an alternative that's run by a non-profit and completely open source, please check out: http://www.coactivate.org/ http://www.coactivate.org/
- dschobel 17y ago
  This is why I’m proposing that Librelist be run similar to freenode.net in that it should be developed by the same community and a not-for-profit operation. What else do you have?
- zedshaw 17y ago
  It's a good thing your logo is a gear, because that's a lot of gear for "just a mailing list". :-)
Aegean 17y ago
If it works out to be a friendly list interface with a group feeling, this would be an absolute winner project. As a year of graduates we use a yahoogroups list since 2000, and we never changed it. Yahoogroups is currently running on 1995 technology, and google groups get spammed, let alone the web pages look like a pharmacy store. Also both lack the "we are a group" feeling. So yes, since we're looking for a better interface and couldn't find one hitting 2010, if done properly this would be a definite winner.
j2d2 17y ago
JSON access and spam filtering!! I'm sold
est 17y ago
This is off topic, but are there any mailist that archive nothing, anonymize every poster's ID except spam or uninvited, delete unnecessary headers, and do not log anything?
- zedshaw 17y ago
  Not that I know of, then again, if you want that, uh, why are you on a mailing list that's public in the first place. Sounds like you want a PGP key ring and a great Mutt alias setup.
dschobel 17y ago
Nothing to allow tyranny of the minority or majority. It’s all about free speech and open communication. However, this is balanced with the above spam marking, and potentially a “troll rating” that’s similar to a spam rating. How do you reconcile these two when an unpopular opinion can be marginalized as troll or spam?
- codexon 17y ago
  I don't think that problem can ever be solved without resorting to human administrative decisions.
pieter 17y ago
I wanted to use it, but then came across this: >You also subscribe to a list by simply sending your first message to list@librelist.com. It will then confirm you and send your original email on to the list. No special subscribe addresses, difficult workflows, or endless help references. Just send an email. Totally unacceptable IMHO, and unlike how any other mailing list functionality works. If you send a message to the list, it should arrive there, without confirmation from you, and you shouldn't be subscribed unless you explicitly want that. Otherwise how can you participate in a conversation on the mailinglist without subscribing or allow cross-mailinglist posts?
- zedshaw 17y ago
  Oops, it actually doesn't work that way anymore. Updated the main page. Thanks.
papersmith 17y ago
Just curious, do most people here use the email client as the primary interface for the group sites? I personally use the web interface for busy listings just to keep things separate from my actual email, and email client for only very low-volume listings. Am I missing out on something?
- sfk 17y ago
  Yes: Gnus, slrn, mutt, maildrop.

173 points by mattculbreth 17y ago

This isn’t to say that for-profit companies are bad, it’s just that if they can make money by tracking your behavior and serving you ads, then that will take precedence over giving your project a good user experience. This strikes me as hitting the nail on the head!

petervandijck 17y ago
That doesn't make any sense. Making money somehow causes less focus on user experience?
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- zedshaw 17y ago
  Yes, because the primary "user" for a company like Yahoo! or Google is the advertiser, not the mailing list user.
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    And it's not as if they exactly roll out the red carpet for all of their advertising users either. One runs across complaints all the time. So expect to be treated just a little worse than those other guys who make Google & Yahoo money.
  - netcan 17y ago
    The primary "user" for a TV show is the advertiser. Doe that mean they don't care about ratings?
    - viraptor 17y ago
      They do... That's why you will get ads in the middle of the most popular shows. (advertiser's business over user experience again) Ratings are per show, not per channel really.
    - scott_s 17y ago
      The ratings for a show determine how much a network can charge the advertisers for commercial time.
      - netcan 17y ago
        Yes that is true. But that isn't the point of the question. The implication of the parent is that since Google (by analogy TV companies) make money from advertising, they have less incentive to take care of users. Ratings determine how much a network can charge the advertisers for commercial time. Ratings are a measure of viewer satisfaction. This isn't coincidental.
        scott_s 17y ago
        The analogy fails because networks have a finite amount of air time to sell every day. Shows with low ratings get dropped. Google and others can literally create advertising space. Applications with relatively low usage cost them little, but they are also unlikely to invest in improving it.
        netcan 17y ago
        Google have an equivalent of limited space.
        stinkytaco 17y ago
        No they don't. They have limited attention, but their space is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. Networks have 24 hours of programming, Google has millions of page views, application users, etc. But, even if something gets very small amounts of attention, it is still incredibly cheap to serve ads (because that's all automated) and, as a result, make money. The user experience only has to be good enough to keep enough people using it that you break even on the infrastructure.

rufo 17y ago

EDIT: Zed just addressed this with some basic plans: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=974744 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=974744 Overall it looks nice. The most interesting/controversial bit to me is the following (taken from librelist.com): Nobody Can Be Taken Off The “libre” in the name means freedom for everyone to discuss their opinions, so nobody will have the right to boot you off or enforce arbitrary “list Nazi” rules simply because you disagree with them. That of course doesn’t mean you should act like a jerk, but the librelist.com philosophy is that healthy communities can survive and need “trolls”.

nollidge 17y ago
So it's freedom, just not for the list manager. Can anyone provide a defense (from Zed or anyone) for the idea that a healthy community needs trolls? I can understand the need for dissent and argument, but it seems to me that trolling is categorically different from those.
- gloob 17y ago
  A not-very-good-but-still-fun argument: Trolls are the predators of internet communities. They prey on the sick, the weak, and the perennially outraged (mostly this last group) and, if they are successful, drive them away from the community. A community without perennially outraged people is better than a community with them. The question is whether this benefit is worth the potential cost, which is probably something that almost entirely dependent on the nature of the community and the personalities of the trolls involved. Edit: By "perennially outraged", I am referring to people who are constantly angry or miserable for no reason other than that such an emotional state is "what they do". They aren't trolls themselves, any more than a particularly unpleasant customer is a troll. They're just constantly unhappy and vocal about it.
  - petervandijck 17y ago
    Trolls drive away the GOOD people, not the weak/sick ones. They're more like a fungus infection than like a predator.

bradgessler 17y ago

Great idea. I've started to smell the "funk" recently around Google Groups; Zed pinned down exactly what it was. This will be a very interesting project moving forward.

whyenot 17y ago

Many systems allow a small minority to tyrannically control the group, applying censorship where nobody actually wants it. Many systems may allow this behavior, but that doesn't mean it actually happens. At least I've never personally encountered it on a mailing list. Is it really that big a problem? On the other hand, maybe the current state of comp.lang.lisp is a good example of what a mailing list with no moderation might look like. There are still good conversations, but there is so much spam and trolling that I don't bother reading it anymore -- it took too much work to sift through all the junk. Even worse, the trolls create an environment that is not exactly inviting to new users.

AndrewWarner 17y ago

I created a Hacker News list so we can test it out. hackernews@librelist.com will let you see it. Glad he's taking on the neglected lists @ google & yahoo.

gojomo 17y ago

They make you log in just to see archives, which ruins any promotional and educational value your archives have. That's not exactly true. At Yahoo, I believe this is up to the list owner. (I know my most active list there allows viewing of archives without logging in.) At Google, it's weirder: if you're not logged into Google at all, you can often view the archives without being prompted for a login. But if you are logged into Google elsewhere, they demand you either reconfirm your login with Groups, or logout entirely, before allowing you to view to the archives. (That's still a problem -- enough of an annoyance in fact that I wouldn't consider hosting any more groups there until it's fixed. But it seems mainly an eccentricity of their cross-site login policies, and does still offer a route to non-logged-in viewing.)

philipn 17y ago

Folks, if you're looking for an alternative that's run by a non-profit and completely open source, please check out: http://www.coactivate.org/ http://www.coactivate.org/

dschobel 17y ago
This is why I’m proposing that Librelist be run similar to freenode.net in that it should be developed by the same community and a not-for-profit operation. What else do you have?
zedshaw 17y ago
It's a good thing your logo is a gear, because that's a lot of gear for "just a mailing list". :-)

Aegean 17y ago

If it works out to be a friendly list interface with a group feeling, this would be an absolute winner project. As a year of graduates we use a yahoogroups list since 2000, and we never changed it. Yahoogroups is currently running on 1995 technology, and google groups get spammed, let alone the web pages look like a pharmacy store. Also both lack the "we are a group" feeling. So yes, since we're looking for a better interface and couldn't find one hitting 2010, if done properly this would be a definite winner.

j2d2 17y ago

JSON access and spam filtering!! I'm sold

est 17y ago

This is off topic, but are there any mailist that archive nothing, anonymize every poster's ID except spam or uninvited, delete unnecessary headers, and do not log anything?

zedshaw 17y ago
Not that I know of, then again, if you want that, uh, why are you on a mailing list that's public in the first place. Sounds like you want a PGP key ring and a great Mutt alias setup.

dschobel 17y ago

Nothing to allow tyranny of the minority or majority. It’s all about free speech and open communication. However, this is balanced with the above spam marking, and potentially a “troll rating” that’s similar to a spam rating. How do you reconcile these two when an unpopular opinion can be marginalized as troll or spam?

codexon 17y ago
I don't think that problem can ever be solved without resorting to human administrative decisions.

pieter 17y ago

I wanted to use it, but then came across this: >You also subscribe to a list by simply sending your first message to list@librelist.com. It will then confirm you and send your original email on to the list. No special subscribe addresses, difficult workflows, or endless help references. Just send an email. Totally unacceptable IMHO, and unlike how any other mailing list functionality works. If you send a message to the list, it should arrive there, without confirmation from you, and you shouldn't be subscribed unless you explicitly want that. Otherwise how can you participate in a conversation on the mailinglist without subscribing or allow cross-mailinglist posts?

zedshaw 17y ago
Oops, it actually doesn't work that way anymore. Updated the main page. Thanks.

papersmith 17y ago

Just curious, do most people here use the email client as the primary interface for the group sites? I personally use the web interface for busy listings just to keep things separate from my actual email, and email client for only very low-volume listings. Am I missing out on something?

sfk 17y ago
Yes: Gnus, slrn, mutt, maildrop.