[GoLUG] Mailing list, long term.

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 14 Aug 2025 16:08:36 -0700
Ron <ron at bclug.ca> wrote:

> Steve Litt wrote on 2025-08-14 14:29:
> 
> > All email clients suck. Claws-mail, Evolution and Mutt suck the
> > least, but they all suck.  
> 
> Debatable. Thunderbird is pretty competent at minimum. Some of us
> even like it.

When I escaped from Kmail
(https://troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm), I "interviewed"
many, many email clients. My findings on Thunderbird is that it's
non-functional when connected to an IMAP server with tens of thousands
of messages, which was my situation.
 
> > Now's my chance not to saddle the user with an email
> > client.  
> 
> Everyone *already* has an email client. Probably configured how they 
> like it.

OK, I need to refine my statement: Now's my chance to give people to
give people a mailing list without using their favorite email client,
which, although configured optimally for their needs, still probably
sucks.

Also, I have a chance to prevent people with borked email from
subjecting their listmates to their email clients' rudeities, including
spam prevention purposed subject munging, complete lack of quoting
marks, gratuitous top posting (great for business CYA, sucks for mind
melding), etc. This in no way eliminates all the stupidities some
posters foist upon the list, including failure to trim irrelevant
quoted material, failure to eliminate quoted material below their final
response, no-context replies, etc. You can't automate away stupidity.

> 
> 
> > Also, NNTP has fallen out of use, meaning that I'd get less help
> > with a NNTP based MindMeld.  
> 
> Less help than something you write yourself, which not a single other 
> person on the planet has experience with?

MUCH less help than something I write myself. On the client end,
EVERYBODY AND THEIR DOG knows Python. As far as Go, every month more
people know it. There's good Go documentation, so LLMs can do a good
job helping me, and I can look up things in the docs. Go comes with
gofmt, which formats source in a standard way so we can all work on the
same source without fighting about how far to indent, etc.

 
> Like Barry said, I wouldn't tell someone not to do what you're
> proposing to do, it's a learning experience at minimum.
> 
> But be realistic about uptake.

I am realistic. If one LUG uses it, especially if that LUG is GoLUG,
that's all the uptake I need. I'm not trying to achieve world
domination.

 
> Have you polled this list to see who'd install the client and run it 
> full-time?  Isn't it worth at least asking?

Not if they haven't had a chance to work with it.
 
> Barry said (and I imagine others would agree) that proprietary
> options are off the table. How to you plan on overcoming that
> challenge?
> 
> Is the idea to shut down the mailing list and force us to install
> your app, or run both and double workload or risk splitting the
> messages across platforms?

No no no no NO!!!

As long as we have a functional email mailing list, GoLUG uses the
functional email mailing list. If our email mailing list lasts forever,
we use it forever.

Problem is, GoLUG has a history of mailing list admins quitting, and
lots of problems every time this happened. Mailman adminning is a
difficult, time consuming, and thankless job. We need MindMeld in case
we encounter a time when nobody can admin Mailman.

As far as splitting messages across platforms, MindMeld might start as
a very specialized list, perhaps a list about MindMeld :-)

> Even if every mailing list in the world switches to "Mind Meld",
> we'll all still have email clients running, right?

Abso-lutely! MindMeld doesn't replace email, it replaces email based
mailing lists. Person to person email is still fairly healthy in 2025.

> The problem with email, aside from spam, isn't even the clients, it's 
> the servers.
> 
> SPF is easy.
> DKIM is set-and-forget, pretty easy
> DMARC is easy to set up and the XML reports are useless because "XML"
> 
> 
> The problem is:
> 
>  > postconf | wc -l
>  > 1053  
> 
> Yeah, over one thousand configuration options just for postfix.
> 
> Excluding gray-listing, spam detection and filtering, and mailbox
> storage.
> 
> For another example, if one wishes IMAP:
> 
>  > doveconf | wc -l
>  > 1446  
> 
> That's a *lot* of options to worry about on services exposed to the 
> internet and probed multiple times per second, 24/7.
> 
> 
> 
> <digression>
> 
> Strange that the "I hate $software because too complicated" folks
> never mention email.

Yes.

> 
> Nor X11, which Xorg themselves abandoned as too complex a collection
> of decades of patching to bother with anymore.

Yes, although with my small knowledge of graphics, Wayland isn't the
answer.

> 
> And which has zero security (Discord window can see all the inputs to
> my banking web page?!?).

That's awful!

> 
> </digression>
> 
> 


SteveT

Steve Litt 
Spring 2023 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques