Mail Lists and email

[ghenne]

As I understand the issues, the major objections to Yahoo! Groups are:
1. The ads
2. Poor searching
3. Poor threading of messages.

The objections to the SL113 board are
1. No automatic emailing of all discussion topics
2. No way to reply to discussion topics by email

For a bit of background, I'm a member of a number of email discussion groups. I am a software developer: We take these groups very seriously. It's vital to our work to be very current, and being software developers, we tend to get the good software tools first. Web only groups have pretty much died for our purposes: we're too lazy to go to a web site to participate in a discussion. We'd rather have it come to us.

My own participation in the SL groups has gone way down since SL113 started and the Yahoo messages have slowed down.

I looked at how the lists I participate in handle this.

Some use the services of Lyris. It looks good, but would be expensive for SL113. The cost would be $200/month plus a $100 setup fee.

The rest of my lists use eScribe.com in combination with Yahoo!. eScribe.com allows you to set up a list, much like the one on the SL113 site. It has good search features, and allows you to view messages in date or thread order (SL113 currently has only thread order). The interface may not be as pretty, but it is faster to navigate a thread than on SL113, especially on busy topics.

Postings on Yahoo are automatically added to the eScribe archive, so the existing Yahoo! group could continue to be used. There is no cost for eScribe.

As far as I can tell, doing this will handle the needs of both groups.

Here's the eScribe FAQ for more info:
<http://www.escribe.com/escribe/faq.html>

I've sent a couple of questions to the eScribe people on a couple of details that are not clear to me yet, but I thought I should get this on the table for discussion.

[Peter van Es]

As I've mentioned in the e-mail list also, I too prefer, based on past experience, and e-mail list. Now I understand that the software used for this system is public domain... (Snitz Forums). Would they be able to handle changes, or are there people here that understand the underlying technology well enough to be able to add the mail functionality we like (including posting) to the system ? It can't be impossible, surely !

Peter

Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events

[rwmastel]

I just looked at the eScribe site.  In my personal opinion, the sample archives are hard to follow.  I have seen that threaded discussion list archive system on other sites that archive e-mail lists.  It's hard for me to navigate.  I like to be able to scroll through a thread of messages on a single page like on this site.  I don't like clicking links to go back and fourth through all the messages manually.  Also, because the messages are e-mail based, lots of times you get messages with the original messages included.  So you end up having to find the new message among the old ones.  That's my modest complaint with that type of archive.  Here is an example:

http://members4.boardhost.com/beckerboard/


I imagine the search tools for these archive systems would be very good.

Rodd
1966 230SL Euro
1994 E420

[admin]

Peter, George:
As you mention, Snitz is Open Source Code software...the underlying coding is available for anyone to modify and improve...it is supported by a community of users and modifiers including public discussion of issues and suggested improvements located at forum.snitz.com/forum

We've been active in those discussions since the early design phase of this website. It is our understanding that no modification to allow e-mail posting exists for Snitz or similar message software because of the difficulty in coding such a mod. I believe it has to do with the nature of a threaded display which makes it complicated for e-mails to find the correct thread. Yahoo allows e-mail posting because it simply puts the next e-mail in the last poistion. There is no thread display. This allows e-mail posting but does not allow messages and replies on a common topic to be displayed together...

We want to have e-mail posting here, to be convenient and easy to use by all,  but so far we have not found an e-mail posting capability that retains the advantages of a threaded forum.
Richard M, Admin

[ghenne]

Rodd,

It's largely a matter of style. This way this discussion list works can be more confusing, since it doesn't build a proper tree of replies. Even though I'm replying to your message at 17:30, I'll be placed after Richard's message at 17:43 (which I'm not replying to). The eScribe archive would sort this properly.

Did you notice that eScribe lets you also view the posts sorted by day? That way, you can see all the posts for a day in one view. Here, you have to go to each topic and scroll to the end, which can be several pages if it is a popular topic.

I happen to like having quoted messages in the thread. I try to trim of the parts I'm not replying to, so it makes it easier to see the context  of my reply.

I got a bit more info from eScribe. They'll import all our Yahoo! messages in the archive for a one time fee of $124, which seems well worthwhile.

I did find one drawback to eScribe: posting that are made directly to the eScribe bulletin board do not get sent out by email. Overall, that's not fatal: it's what we have right now.

[ghenne]

One more thing: While Yahoo! can be set up to feed into the eScribe archive, it doesn't have to be just Yahoo! messages in there. Any other mailing list that we find can also be set up to dump its messages into the archive, making it a repository of postings from other places as well.

[rwmastel]

There is no thread display in Yahoo!

Actually, there is.  Log onto the site, click on Messages to see the posts, then scroll to the bottom of the page.  You can choose Date or Thread.  This seems to work to some extent, but like their search function, it is not 100%.

Rodd
1966 230SL Euro
1994 E420

[rwmastel]

George,
Have you clicked on "Active Topics" after logging into this forum?  See if that helps your problem with seeing only new posts.  Also, threads with new posts are a different color (as you know).

WARNING - I'm getting up on the soap box!  

All in all, you are right when you say "It's largely a matter of style."  The founding members went through this quite a lot for several months trying to decide on what was the best way to do things.  The big push was that we knew we could not continue to live inside a Yahoo! Group.

- we couldn't find information in old posts
- we could only have 10 database tables
- we could not freely configure the format of our database tables
- we could only have 40MB for file & photo storage
- we could not put our own design to the web site
- we could not fully utilize the databases, links, files, etc.

Those are the biggies off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more.  So, www.sl113.org is what we came up with.  I hope we can evolve it into something that suits everyone's needs because we really want to be the center of the Pagoda Universe.  We want thousands to join us world wide.  We want everyone to be able to find anything regarding a Pagoda.  This Group and it's site should help owners enjoy their cars whether they be for the National concourse judging, daily driving, or just saved from the salvage yard.  We want to preserve information regarding these cars for generations to come, and we could not see a Yahoo! Group facilitating that goal.  We have a passion for this, which is evident by the many hours and dollars it took to organize and start this effort.  You have a group of volunteers putting great effort into this for Zero monitary gain.  You will see no advertisements on our site.  No money goes into any pockets, it all goes back to support the Group.  I can see that you are this kind of person and if you can help us reach our goals, then your efforts will be appreciated by a great many people around the world.

Whew!  Did I just write all that? [:p]

Rodd
1966 230SL Euro
1994 E420

[ghenne]

Rodd's Soap Box:

I agree totally. The new site is way better than the old Yahoo! group. It's nicely laid out and well thought through. The new capabilties are what is needed to move this group to the next level. Congratulations on a job well done!

My only concern is losing the ability to communicate with the forums by email.

[Peter van Es]

I hate to be so agreeable, but I agree too that the limitations of the yahoo groups are too much for a large, active community, and I think this site is an improvement.

Coming back to the Snitz open source issue, I can think of at least one (fairly foolproof -- but not completely) mechanism which would allow forum messages posted to be mailed to subscribers, and allos subscribers to mail back replies to the software package which it would be able to thread back into the discussion.

These packages store messages in a database, each with their own unique ID. The ID could be mailed along with the (hidden) headers of the e-mail package -- and for instance in the subject line.

By then replying to the e-mail that ID would be intact, and could be used to identify the message to which the reply belongs, and replies could then be inserted in the conversation in the order of arrival (pretty much like in this web forum).

Perhaps some of us tech savvy should have a look at the design and the code. Regrettably, I'm not an ASP guy...

Peter


Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events

[Cees Klumper]

Well, as a computer-nitwit-CPA, I am definitely not qualified to speak on this subject, but (I will anyway:) Peter's suggestion is EXACTLY what I thought before - surely it should be do-able to identify each topic with a unique number, and ensure each (emailed) reply is automatically put into that bucket. Actually I know someone in Belgium/California who has built an E-company around this idea, assigning a unique number to each email/post - they call it the "E-clip" (as in "paperclip") - a unique identifier that attaches to an email, making it distinguishable (and thus linkable) to any other mail as desired.
I don't know what I am missing - it seems there is an overwhelming need for this functionality for discussion forum software, it seems conceptually really easy to realize, and yet nobody seems capable of doing so ??
This discussion should probably not (only) be taking place here, but on the Snitz user group forum. Is it usufeul for me to contact my acquaintance at this "E-clip" company??

white 1969 280 SL

[n/a]

Yes, it IS possible to create forum software with fully integrated email features.  

It's been done, and it was pretty tricky to get working.  Regrettably, the software that did this is D-E-A-D, along with the company I worked for while developing it.

It's what Pagoda113.com started life on, but it seemed at the time that only a minority of users were really interested in using the email features.  Anyway, point is, if it's been done once it can be done again.  There is hope.


[dorian] | http://mercedes113.com

[Cees Klumper]

Thanks Dorian ! I knew it can be done. Maybe, since you had your hands on it recently, you can somehow re-create this feature and market it to the world of discussion forums / websites. Given the strong cry for this feature, there is definitely a market out there that just seems to be ready for the taking. Strong point seems to be people can participate in a forum without having to visit websites through a browser, which they may not have access to (e.g. while being at work).

The email-posting functionality is the only thing that keeps Pagoda113.com and this site from being as user-friendly as Yahoo! groups...

Cees

white 1969 280 SL

[DavidAPease]

Cees,

It might be useful for you to contact your "E-clip" friend to find out if his technology is protected by copyrights that would keep us from doing the same thing (assuming that any of us had the time to do it!).

BTW, I really like the way this system shows us the posts we're replying to while we type.  When I reply online to the Yahoo group, I sometimes keep two browser windows open to get that ability.


-David Pease
'66 French 230SL

[Peter van Es]

I think e-mail integration into Forums, as Dorian describes, was probably not a commercial success because it makes it harder to:

a. present advertising
b. track user behaviour
c. control the environment

Precisely the reasons the Yahoo forums are too limiting for our goals. That's why commercial group collaboration or forum software hardly ever opens up e-mail integration.

However, with non-commercial, open software you have a chance. So I think the best idea is to "sell the idea" to the user community of Snitz forums at large, so that the developers become interested in developing the idea.

They know their software best. They should be able to add this functionality with the least impact, and it will be maintained with future releases of their software.

I think this is the most fruitful way to go.

Peter

Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events