[Python-ideas] Browser for mailing lists

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 8:51 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, mailing lists are *terrible* if you just want to drop in, ask one
> question & leave again. One possible answer to that is AskBot (a self-hosted
> site-specific, Stack Overflow style Q&A forum), but the MM3/HyperKitty web
> gateway idea is aimed at making the existing *already invested* list
> participants more readily available to new users without having to ask those
> existing participants to change their reading habits and look in a new place
> for questions.

Drifting off-topic, but I think this is actually a subtle feature.
I've often joined a mailing list to ask one specific question, and
then seen questions that I can help answer. In fact, that's how I came
to be stuck on python-list and family... of course, other people may
not see that as a positive feature...

What it means is that there's no stark difference between "people here
to ask questions" and "people here to answer and help out". It's users
helping users. Most lists don't have so much traffic that it turns me
off (a few do - I unsubscribed from the SciTE lists fairly quickly),
so I'll hang around for a while after getting my answer - or, given
that I've probably exhausted a number of other avenues before even
posting the question, after not getting any answer. The more people
you can engage that way, the more likely the list will have the person
on it who can answer that obscure question that comes up.

ChrisA