[EuroPython] How about to move the mailing list to Google Groups?

[Paul Boddie]

On Friday 17 July 2009 18:13:20 Michael Sparks wrote:
>
> You can use google groups in way that suffers from less spam though.
> You can set it such that anyone subcribed to the list can post without
> moderation and that people outside can post but is moderated. You can
> also set it such that anyone's *first* post to the list is moderated,
> and finally you can also delete spam.

I administer a Google group in this fashion, but it took a while for Google to 
implement what I would call an optimal solution: someone joins and tries to 
spam; I have a button labelled "spam" that I can press and it not only 
deletes the message but also bans the person.

> That said, there are some people apparently who don't like google
> groups for reasons I've not heard well articulated, which never made
> sense to me so I'll leave it to them to articulate :-)

I use Google Groups to read newsgroups and, well, Google discussion groups. 
However, I like the Mailman stuff, and the Web archives are very clean and 
readable with only slight problems with non-plain text or non-standard 
messages that appear once in a while. Also, anyone can download the archives 
for this and other lists from python.org which might be a problem for some 
people with regard to spam, but it gives a degree of flexibility and data 
portability that I don't think you get with Google.

> Also, unlike python.org, google groups doesn't reject my normal mailer
> (kmail+exim, etc). (This is the reason I'm really paying attention to
> the concurrency sig since it was decided to move it to python.org,
> since it's a PITA to have to use a web mail system to post to it.)

Is this some kind of blacklisting or greylisting going on? I had problems with 
python.org addresses until it was pointed out that my mail provider wasn't 
following good practices around Internet mail (and my clueless ISP was 
getting itself repeatedly blacklisted). After switching providers I haven't 
had a problem since.

> That said, personally I'm +1 on the idea.

For me it's a -1. They had people in the Openmoko community asking for forums 
and most people were able to live with a Nabble front-end to the list once 
that was set up. I agree with Christian: people can easily set up a front-end 
for python.org lists if they want.

Paul

P.S. Forums can be the absolute worst if searching for stuff on the Internet 
is any indication, often dredging up content-free exchanges accompanied by 
countless animated "avatars" repeated all the way down the page, usually 
portraying some Japanese cartoon hero/heroine, while the participants seem to 
compete on how many animated smileys/emoticons they can include in their 
typically meaningless messages. Let us hope that discussions around 
EuroPython never reach that level!