[Mailman-Developers] Improving the archives

[Terri Oda]

On 20-Jul-07, at 8:39 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> I've looked at a few lurker archivers and I wasn't blown away by its
> user interface.  That's apparently highly configurable though.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about interface, and I'm coming to  
the conclusion that something more like a web bulletin board is  
probably the way to go, given that people use them all the time  
without much trouble and with a fairly minimal amount of whining. ;)  
I'm trying to use interfaces to things like comment systems (which  
are often threaded -- picture the slashdot stuff, maybe?) and popular  
boards like phpbb (which isn't threaded beyond separate topics) as  
guides to how people usually deal with conversations on the web.

It'd actually be fairly easy, at that point, to just put a posting  
interface into the archives (yes, you'd have to be logged in, and  
yes, this means your password becomes that bit more valuable because  
someone having it can pose as you to the list... but they could do  
that by spoofing your email address so I'm not too concerned). But  
then people who don't like email or just want to pop by and check the  
list quickly could actually use mailman like a web board, which is  
something I'm pretty sure would get used (I know my users have asked  
for it in the past).

I've been drafting simple prototype interfaces in my head, trying to  
keep potential architectures in mind.  I'm hoping I'll have time this  
week to code some up HTML and see how well they actually work when  
they're not just inside my head. :)

  Terri