Re: [seul-edu] Mail list versus UUNET newgroup

[Douglas Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

G wrote:

> 
> It occurs to me however, that moving to forum software might be
> a much better direction to go. 
> 
> Doug (Doug Loss), I know you frequent varlinux.org as you submit
> all of the suel-edu 'Linux in Education reports' there all the
> time. Have you perused Nick's forums section? 
> 


Yup, I've read and posted to Nick's forums.  I'll give my thoughts 
about such software and how it might relate to SEUL/edu at the bottom 
of this response.

> 

> Not only do I think it would be good for suel-edu, it would
> probably be good for schools as well as an internal bulliten
> board / chat area. With it's rather flexible security
> provisions, you could set up forums for students, parents,
> teachers or any combination.
> 
[snip]
> 
> I realize there is special purpose software available to perform
> some if not all of these functions (based on my readings) but
> I've been impressed with the FUDforum software as a mature and
> well supported application that should be pretty easy to set up.
> (yes, I know - a run on sentence.)
> 

If you look in the "Intranet" section of our Application Index you'll 
find a number of systems that do just that.  They're designed for 
school use and work very nicely.  Since SEUL/edu isn't a school and 
isn't attached to any specific project, I've been loathe to use any of 
these apps over another out of concern for alienating proponents of 
whichever ones didn't get chosen.

I have nothing against web forum software myself, although I prefer 
email mailing lists.  But Jan Wilson's concern is a very real and 
important one.  That having been said, if there's web forum software 
that will allow full cross-posting between the web forum and the 
mailing list I'll be happy to look into implementing it.  An absolute 
requirement for that to happen is that both the web forum and the 
mailing list be "front ends" to the same discussions rather than two 
separate discussions.  I don't know if FUDforum allows this, but I'm 
pretty sure Phorum does.  Harish Pillay from the Singapore LUG is 
planning to install Phorum for Schoolforge to fill this exact role (I 
have to get back to him, as he was away on military duty and I haven't 
heard from him since).  If that works out it will be very easy to use 
Phorum for the seul-edu mailing list too, as both groups are housed on 
the same physical servers.

Here's another concern I have.  The seul-edu and the various 
Schoolforge mailing lists are private lists, where posts are only 
accepted from list subscribers.  Any posts from non-subscribers are 
bounced to the list owner first, who can approve or discard them. 
This is why you don't see any spam on this mailing list (I see it all 
and dump it).  If we set up a web forum that can cross-post to the 
mailing list, it will be important that posts to the forum be "vetted" 
in some way, either through forum posting only being allowed to 
logged-in members (I know FUDforum does this) or through posts having 
to be approved by some moderator before being posted.

The first concern here is a show-stopper--if it can't be done we won't 
put up the web forum.  The second is a very nice to have, but if it 
can't be done we can still proceed.

-- 
Doug Loss          As long as I have you there is just
drloss@suscom.net  one other thing I'll always need--
(570) 326-3987     tremendous self control.
                           Ashleigh Brilliant