Ask Slashdot: Best Solution For an Email Discussion Forum?

John3 writes "For the past 15+ years I've maintained The Hardlines Digest (URL omitted to reduce the /. effect), an email discussion list for members of the retail hardware and lumber business. Since the beginning I've run the list on a Windows box running Lyris Listmanager, and it's worked admirably over the years. However, the list now has over 2,600 members and Listmanager doesn't have a nice web interface for users that like to read via their browser. Listmanager also doesn't handle attachments and HTML formatting well for the daily 'digest' version of the discussions. Finally, I'd really like to move hosting off-site so I don't need to maintain the server. The list members are hardware store owners and many are technically challenged, so I need to keep change to a minimum and make it easy for them to migrate. I've considered Google Groups and that seems to have most of the features I need. Are there any other low cost solutions for hosting a large discussion list?"

Comments

A big wave.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask Slashdot: Best Solution For an Email Discussion Forum?

Google Wave.

Re:A big wave.

[Wootery]

Don't know why this was downvoted -- this is a legitimate suggestion.

Google Wave (now Apache Wave) is now open-source, so you can deploy your own. In my experience it works nicely, though there are certainly some things to be wary of, like the ability to unaccountably edit other people's submissions.

I used yahoogroups

[cpu6502]

(Formerly egroups.com and onelist.com.) Members can continue receiving emails if they prefer that method of delivery, as I do, or they can read directly on the web. It also allows for the storage of files and photos in the group

Re:I used yahoogroups

[Idbar]

I agree. I had another group on Google and the features from the yahoo groups have always been above. Of course the threading from Google is really neat, but yahoo offers even polls, makes photo albums easier among others.

Re:I used yahoogroups

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait till you try Facebook groups!

Re:I used yahoogroups

[ibennetch]

I ran a couple of groups on Yahoogroups a few years ago and it was nothing but a hassle. Sure, the feature list sounds great, but in implementation things needed constant attention. End users would report not receiving any mail for days or weeks at a time (no, it wasn't even in their spam folders; they just disappeared) and logging in/creating accounts was sometimes problematic. At least at the time, there were three ways to add a user: I could add their email address, they could send an email to group+subscribe@yahoogroups.com, or they could create a yahoo account and join through the web interface. Choosing either of the first two options left their account in some sort of half-created limbo where they got the group email but weren't able to sign in to the web interface (to change settings, view photos, etc). There were other minor issues, but those were the two I constantly fought against.

All that being said, it wasn't the worst service I've ever used and it was free, but I was always waiting for the next breakage or issue that would require my manual intervention. They could have greatly improved the service since then; it's been about two years since I migrated away, but I wouldn't personally recommend it. We miss some of the features (the two you mention, file storage and photo sharing), but I'm glad to be rid of the administrative workload.

Re:I used yahoogroups

[michelcolman]

Excellent suggestion, since most technically challenged people are already on FaceBook anyway.

Re:I used yahoogroups

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI .. Yahoo Groups servers are at times blacklisted on SpamCop. Also many mail admins like myself will add a spam point or 2 in SpamAssassin, because Yahoo isn't policing their server that well. Sad, but true.

Re:I used yahoogroups

[Anonymous Coward]

I am on a couple Yahoo Groups for "old friends" and know the list managers well. The startup hassles while real are minimal and it is compatible with unsophisticated folks. You can post to/from phones, computers, pads, with email or web. It supports both attachments and centrally stored stuff. I opt to get the emails daily so I can do the stuff I do with email like reply to sets of folks (my friends) and search messages and sort by subject and such. The web version is crippled in that regard.

The problems of slow or missing messages while not all the time is real and still happens. I don't get why only Yahoo experiences that. So I would not use the list for anything mission critical. But for what you are doing it is pretty good. Our groups are about 1000 and 300 folks. All over the world now. One guy posts from China.

JJ

Re:I used yahoogroups

[RobertLTux]

err you do realize that these folks have access to clueby 4-6-8's and are willing to use them on folks being snarky??

the goal is to migrate the list over without requiring all the members to go through a 14 step process (of which 4 are undocumented 2 have the steps in the wrong order and 3steps are always documented WRONG).

i would see who has which service (of yahoo google or something else) and then use that to decide which way to go.

if you have (or could get) a Hosted Domain most decent providers can setup list software directly on your domain host.

Re:I used yahoogroups

[John3]

I did a poll of users and over 75% had a Google account. I didn't include Yahoo in the poll, forgot they had groups as well.

Re:I used yahoogroups

[John3]

I certainly like to push the audience to learn new technology, but I also don't want to lose the critical mass that is comfortable with the present format. These are users who use AOL email and often click "SPAM" rather than "DELETE" when reading emails from the list.

John

Re:I used yahoogroups

[troutner]

I've used Yahoo Groups for the Free Charge Controller open source project for the last two years, and I've had nothing but good experiences with it. Granted, my user base is much smaller and 'active' is a strong word to use for the group.

Re:I used yahoogroups

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a poll of users and over 75% had a Google account. I didn't include Yahoo in the poll, forgot they had groups as well.

Fuck groups. I totally forgot there was a Yahoo.

Try Dlang's forum

[Twinbee]

The D programming language people have successfully combined a mailing list and tradition web forum into one. What's more, the web forum is lightning fast to boot (fastest ever forum I've ever used - why can't phpBB etc. be that fast?).

The exact specifics are unknown to me, but from what I've heard, they've done a terrific job:
http://forum.dlang.org/

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Bill Dimm]

The actual forum software is apparently here, and is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet Jesus Fuck that is fast.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course, it's written in D.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought you were just being a jerk, but hot damn that's incredible, even opening the forum with 16,000+ topics and a topic with 60 replies is lightning fast.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[gnapster]

(fastest ever forum I've ever used - why can't phpBB etc. be that fast?).

Indeed. More to the point, why can't slashdot be that fast?

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[rgbrenner]

D is based on C...

I develop web apps in C (and postgresql on freebsd), including a forum for a site called tuxforums (shutdown a couple of years ago)... and they are just as fast as that forum... you hardly even have to try. GCC takes care of most of the optimizations.. you just have to avoid doing anything really stupid (as far as resources go)

http://www.osdisc.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi/index.html

Average page generation time for that page: 17ms
Average page gen time for the entire site: 58ms

The downsides of using C are that it's C.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Twinbee]

Vladimir Panteleev (aka CyberShadow) has mentioned some of the reasons why it's so fast at ycombinator:

* Optimized and deflated static resources
* Deflated HTML output
* SQLite prepared statements
* Integrated HTTP server (although it's currently in front of an Apache proxy)
* An optimized string builder (https://github.com/CyberShadow/DAppenderResearch)
* RAM cache of frequent DB queries

A Reddit story exists too where he speaks more about it:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ppre5/the_new_d_online_forum_software_written_in_d/#c3rhk2i

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[ralphdaugherty]

I had to try it with a response like that. It started out very responsive but hung after I clicked on Discussion Index and tried the link for Google Summer of Code link. Tried backing out to a couple of pages but links hang.

It's the way a good technical discussion forum should be but if used by typical users with all the image overhead they bring with them and the hangups of typical links to ad sites it would be slowed down like the rest of them.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I think that site alone is going to make me take another look at D. When did we stop expecting even dynamic web pages to load in less than five seconds, not counting network latency?

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Chrisq]

I had to try it with a response like that. It started out very responsive but hung after I clicked on Discussion Index and tried the link for Google Summer of Code link. Tried backing out to a couple of pages but links hang.

It's the way a good technical discussion forum should be but if used by typical users with all the image overhead they bring with them and the hangups of typical links to ad sites it would be slowed down like the rest of them.

I tried the same thing, its lightning fast.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[ralphdaugherty]

Yes, I expect I encountered an unusual glitch to hang responses to links (X lit and no response on any link after clicking Stop and trying some additional links). Hopefully I or no one else will encounter it again.

Like I said though, it's good, responsive, the way a technical forum should be, but doesn't carry a crapload of images that typical users burden forums with (from multiple sites) and the typical ad links which paralyze web pages. I'm all for high quality programming like these guys use though.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen!
(irony: waiting for the reply window to load here allows me to read 2 threads there)

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to click after this comment.

At first I didn't think it was anything so great, the link came up about how fast a lot of them come up. Then I clicked the first link from there. Bam! Next link, Bam!

They seem to be using some very efficient caching, because as I said the first hit was about as slow as I have come to expect, but after that first hit, it just works.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Anonymous Coward]

... and maybe the fact that he did not write it in a language not optimized for speed as the rest of us tend to do. :)

Most of the stuff on your list is actually pretty standard stuff.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Anonymous Coward]

D is based on C like Ruby is based on C

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[rgbrenner]

that's stretching the differences a little too far.. D was designed as an improvement on c/c++, and the syntax is the same.

WIkipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)

D is designed with lessons learned from practical C++ usage rather than from a theoretical perspective. ...
Imperative programming in D is almost identical to C. Functions, data, statements, declarations and expressions work just as in C, and the C runtime library can be accessed directly. ...
Explicit memory management is possible using the overloaded operators new and delete, and by simply calling C's malloc and free directly. ...
C's application binary interface (ABI) is supported as well as all of C's fundamental and derived types, enabling direct access to existing C code and libraries.

And the GDC compiler is just a front-end for GCC

So the language isn't as different from C/C++ as Ruby.

Re:Try Dlang's forum

[Anonymous Coward]

The exact same time people decided that JS and AJAX were wonderful tools.

If the list is public consider MarkMail

[nullchar]

MarkMail archives a bunch of OSS mailing lists with a nice web interface to the archives. Senders to the list still need to use SMTP though. http://markmail.org/

If your list is private, it appears MarkMail may still work, but you'll need to contact them for pricing. I'm sure other comments will contain better options for private email list management via web interface.

The one nice thing about regular old email is the low tech knowledge required to contribute to the discussion. From the summary, it appears all the current members know how to email already (though I'm sure top-posting is a problem).

Re:If the list is public consider MarkMail

[yakatz]

Why would top posting be a problem?

On Monday June 18, 2012 at 08:44PM, nullchar said:
From the summary, it appears all the current members know how to email already (though I'm sure top-posting is a problem).

Re:If the list is public consider MarkMail

[serbanp]

were you trying for the Funny mod?

Re:If the list is public consider MarkMail

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty obvious that he was.

Re:If the list is public consider MarkMail

[yakatz]

Indeed. You will usually (for example) find my replies to messages on mailing lists either inline or at the bottom (unless I am replying from iOS, which can make it difficult to post anywhere but the top).

mailman + VPS hosting?

[betterunixthanunix]

Aside from having a somewhat dated web interface, GNU mailman is pretty easy to use. If I remember correctly, you can have people send an email to subscribe, which might be easier for some of your subscribers (depending on how old their computers / software are, which may be an issue judging by your description of the subscribers). You could also just do what all the cool kids do and use Yahoo or Google.

Re:mailman + VPS hosting?

[93 Escort Wagon]

The guy talks about how his current solution doesn't "handle attachments and HTML formatting well for the daily 'digest' version", and you're going to recommend mailman? Really?

Mailman is a terrible, terrible list manager for any list where the main participants aren't Unix geeks (meaning people who aren't using something like mutt as their mail agent).

So 20 years ago, I know, but...

[Roger Wilcox]

...usenet?

Re:So 20 years ago, I know, but...

[thogard]

You can create your own forums on your own Usenet servers and not propagate them anywhere you don't want them to go.

There are lots of usenet-->web forum packages as well as email gateways so you can give everyone what you have now, plus all the new good stuff.

A pair of usenet servers on different clouds with a backup feed someplace will can cope with far more messages per day than even the hardest hit web forum software and has massive redundancy and scaleability.

The best bit is you can try a bunch of different gateway products and find which works best.

An early competitor to Usenet called notes (the one that predates lotus notes) still have some active users.

Still alive

[betterunixthanunix]

Usenet is still alive and still a popular place for technical and political discussions. There are several free Usenet servers out there.

One nice thing about Usenet is that there is no single point of failure.

Re:Still alive

[the_B0fh]

If you are creating a new group. Is he looking to go through the voting process?

Re:Still alive

[theshowmecanuck]

If they're wanting to get their porn at the same time as talk about their business, then it might be a good idea. Valid point though. Mine. No yours I mean. ;) Too bad experience has had to make the process so onerous.

Aside from that, it isn't really a good idea in this case. The OP mentioned that the users are somewhat technically challenged. Most people are unaware of usenet. Most wouldn't know how to go about connecting to an account. Yes it is no more difficult than setting up an email account but most people can't set up an email client if it isn't automated for them. As well, most home and/or business internet accounts these days have stopped including usenet access. So the OP's users would have to spend more money to subscribe to a usenet service when there are free alternatives. As much as I like to hear about someone wanting to add to what I consider the legitimate side of usenet, this is a case where it isn't a good solution.

I still consider usenet to be the home of the true programming geek. :D. But even this is slowly dying. The funny thing is that over the years, it is the one forum that hasn't really ever disappeared. Unlike so many of the popular internet forums of the day which come and go over the years (usually as the site owners try to commercialize them). You'd think that usenet would be a favoured forum if only because of its stability. But then again, the lack of access from home and business internet accounts is partly to blame. The perception that I joked about that it is only a place for porn or pirated films and music is another. Ah well.

Re:Still alive

[westlake]

Usenet is still alive and still a popular place for technical and political discussions. There are several free Usenet servers out there.

The problem here is that the target audience is the owner of a small hardware store --- who will almost certainly find a Usenet client unfamiliar, awkward and intimidating.

Re:Still alive

[Anonymous Coward]

Usenet has disappeared, we just haven't informed all the kooks still posting there.

Re:Still alive

[betterunixthanunix]

Yes I know, and Google Groups hardly counts as a useful or decent Usenet client. My point was just that Usenet is not "20 years ago," although perhaps the discussions and general atmosphere of Usenet has declined since the early 90s...

Re:Still alive

[Anonymous Coward]

you can simply create a local newsgroup with some usenet providers, which takes only an email to the admin instead of being dragged through a bureaucratic festival of stupidity which makes kafka's work look like a manual for streamlining business practices.

Re:Still alive

[DERoss]

Voting by the general using public is no longer required. The Big8 Management Board makes the decision, Go to http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Main_Page and read the links under "Core Information about the Newsgroup Creation Process".

The benefit of a Big8 (comp.*, news.*, sci.*, humanities.*, rec.*, soc.*, talk.*, and misc.*) newsgroup or even an alt.* newsgroup outside of the Big8 is that you are not tied to any one specific service or to any one specific application on your computer. (If you choose the Big8, your newsgroup would likely fall in the talk.* category.)

Re:Still alive

[Hognoxious]

Google groups is what you get when you let UX wonks design something; looks OK, doesn't fucking work.

Re:Still alive

[JWSmythe]

    There's anyone still using it? Last time I looked, it was a huge dying repository of porn spam. That was over 10 years ago.

Re:Still alive

[Siridar]

Look closely.

Look at sickbeard, sabnzbd, couchpotato, and headphones.

Re:Still alive

[wwbbs]

Four words USENET "NOT SAFE FOR WORK" have you ever tried to blinding navigate the Usenet. I know that the amount of illicit and illegal stuff would make most prostitutes blush, let alone your manager or worse yet HR reviewing access logs. (generally most nntp clients download all the message headers)

Re:Still alive

[Rysc]

You could say the same thing about GNOME3. UX wonks should be kept out of the final UI decision, period. They know how to be wonky but are too narrowly focused to be trusted.

Mailman is likely the best available

[Arrogant-Bastard]

Mailman is not without its faults (which is why 3.X is under development and shows considerable promise) but 2.X is stable, scalable, portable, easy to use from both the web-based GUI and the command line (my preference), complies with relevant standards (such as RFCs 2142, 2369 and 2919), behaves sensibly under duress, integrates well with multiple MTAs, and makes it easy to handle migrations such as yours (by doing a mass invite followed by confirmed opt-in). This is why it's largely supplanted its competitors, particularly majordomo, which was the tool of choice for many years for a LOT of mailing lists. I suspect that it will further eat into the mindshare of similar packages once 3.X is out.

Yahoogroups is a poor choice: it's notoriously unstable, completely insecure, and relies on Yahoo's horribly-maintained email infrastructure, which has been completely overrun by abusers for a decade. Googlegroups is marginally better, although it is also a massive source of spam (best practice on Usenet is to drop all Google-originated articles), it does not comply with standards, and attempts to contact a competent, responsive postmaster yield nothing.

Your best course of action is likely to lease the cheapest (reputable) host that you can find and install Mailman on it. This not only keeps control firmly in yours hands (thus insulating you from the vagaries of third parties) but it also keeps your options open for the future.

Re:Mailman is likely the best available

[0100010001010011]

I use MailMan with Phorum. I wrote a custom plugin to read a POP3 account and post those messages to a web forum. Registered users can reply and it'll send it out to the mailing list.

Re:Mailman is likely the best available

[subreality]

+1 Mailman, but with reservations. I run a large Mailman list and everything you said is true: it can handle large lists gracefully. That doesn't just mean performance. That means handling bounces properly, regex filters to catch things that need to go to the moderation queue, and all the other advanced stuff required for a large list.

However, it's very much a traditional mailing list setup, and that's not what the OP was asking for. It has web-based archives, but they're read-only - you can't do things like click "reply to this" on the web and follow up like you do in a web forum. My userbase is technical, but even still I have a minority that hates having to use an email client, and they do have some good points: in a mail client, you can only see what's in your inbox, not the whole thread. This results in excessive quoting, which just makes things ugly. So you either have to switch back and forth to the archives, or leave stuff in your inbox that you don't intend to reply to, or sort it into folders (automated filtering is really beyond most people). That's extra load for them, and they just want to go to the thread on their web browser. That's where Google and Yahoo excel. Unfortunately they come with all the downsides you mention.

Re:Mailman is likely the best available

[Arrogant-Bastard]

If your users can't see the whole thread, or if they're engaging in excessive quoting, the problem isn't Mailman nor is it the use of a traditional mailing list: the problem is their choice of client and their inability to use it propertly. Solid email clients combined with best practices facilitate both these tasks, as we see everyday on many mailing lists.

To put it another way: mailing lists (and Usenet) are still, far and away, the very best discussion vehicles we have. They work beauitfully, which is why all the serious work of running and developing the 'net happens on them (e.g., linux-kernel, nanog, and so on). But making this happen requires a sensible choice of client and a small investment in learning how to use it in order to communicate effectively. Otherwise we find top-posting, full-quoting imbeciles who are often the same people whining about their lack of utility, when the problem is staring them in the mirror every morning.

Web forums -- and I have used hundreds of them, including this one, since web forums have existed to use -- are vastly less useful. For example: how shall I CC myself a copy of my own comments here today so that I can reference it in the future?

Re:Mailman is likely the best available

[berbo]

Mailman is widely supported at many hosting services. It comes already set up on my mine.

Because its ubiquitous, you'll find it easier to find people to help you manage your list .

Re:Mailman is likely the best available

[John3]

I had forgotten about Yahoo Groups, so just went to explore them. And thanks for the feedback about Mailman. It sounds like it's not much of a change from Listmanager in terms of functionality. My users are really looking for the threaded web discussion interface and both Yahoo and Google seem to have that in a reasonable format.

Re:Mailman is likely the best available

[subreality]

the problem is their choice of client and their inability to use it propertly. Solid email clients combined with best practices facilitate both these tasks

No argument there! I use a solid email client and I know how to use it well, but the fact is that a large number of people don't. In my case enough of my users are technically proficient, and I've just made it clear that the rest can either learn or simply have to cope; fortunately I can in my case, but for what the OP is looking for, well, let's just say he's going to have a lot of Yahoo users. He can say "deal with it", but he's going to lose a significant number of users.

For example: how shall I CC myself a copy of my own comments here today so that I can reference it in the future

That's just one of many ways that web forums suck for email users. My pet peeve is vBulletin: "There may also be other replies, but you will not receive any more notifications until you visit the forum again." Way to completely get the feature WRONG.

The bottom line is that mailing lists work great for people with full-strength email clients, but suck for web users; web forums are good for web users, but suck for those of us who prefer email. Yahoo Groups is really one of very few systems that do OK at both.

Try OSQA

[Anonymous Coward]

osqa dot net is a nice forum software

majordomo ?

[Lisias]

http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/

Re:majordomo ?

[Anonymous Coward]

MajorDomo has not been maintained in over a decade.

Assuming you are trying to scale out, grab a Web Hosting provider. They will be able to bundle DNS registry and web space with Email. Find one of the bazillion mailing list managers (most are free, be wary of commercial ones) out there and slap it down on that web site. It will cost you about $100 per year if you purchase the service over several years. Suddenly, your local machine does not matter anymore.

Ironic Captcha: inundate

Google Groups is okay, but...

[hodma727]

I use it myself with a social group of 40 or so. I occasionally worry if they'll decide to add it to their growing list of abandoned offerings, which is probably a consideration for you too. More annoyingly, like most Google offerings, the interface is pretty crap so I can't imagine it would be enjoyable managing a list your size ;-)

Listserv & MHonArc

[Dreben]

I don't know if MHonArc is still being actively developed, but ListServ (my fav) has a decent web managment interface and MHonArc does a nice job of archiving posts in any number of methods. We implemented this in the day at Bell Labs for any number of internal mail lists (Bell Labs 'had' a lot of internal mail list activity).

http://www.mhonarc.org/

This also works really well for server processes that send automated email notifications with exit statuses, results, etc.

Re:Listserv & MHonArc

[Dreben]

Written in perl, MHonArc has some pretty nifty features I forgot to mention including support for MIME (smtp attachments) that you want to include in your archives allowing you to include images, audio, video, etc., that can be accessed via a browser. In our case, sendmail was typically the stmp server and if I recall correctly it can be configured relatively easily to archive with MHonArc right from within the sendmail.cfg.

Hostnoc!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just sign up for a cheap VPS from Hostnoc / Burst.net, or maybe Singlehop. Actually, there are lots of providers you could use: Eonix (aka Infinitie), Leaseweb, Rackvibe, Limestone Networks, VolumeDrive, GNAX, SecuredServers, or FDCServers would all let you send email, lots and lots of email! It'd be perfect!

Oh, wait, that's a BAD idea. Never mind. Sorry.

Go from mailing list to a Usenet/NNTP group?

[Anonymous Coward]

The NNTP protocol was designed for this very purpose in mind. Mailing lists are only a good option if you only have a hand full of users and you are ok with the idea of managing mailng stuff back and forth by yourself. For online forums the best solution out there is good old Usenet, or at least a NNTP server.

To get a hold of a group which can be accessed through a NNTP interface and you don't want to set up your own server, you have essentially two options: gmane and aioe.org.

With gmane, you really don't have to do nothing, as their service consists of providing a gateway to mailing lists which are already up and running.

The good folks at aioe.org do a bit more than that. They provide a service which they call local group, which is basicallly a request for the server admin to create a newsgroup just for you, which is only available through aioe.org's servers and isn't shared with the rest of the Usenet. You can have moderated groups if you wish. And best of all, they are free.

Re:Go from mailing list to a Usenet/NNTP group?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The NNTP protocol was designed for this very purpose in mind."

He's asking about e-mail, moron.

Re:Go from mailing list to a Usenet/NNTP group?

[Hognoxious]

And email's the wrong tool for multi-party discussions, uber-moron.

Re:Go from mailing list to a Usenet/NNTP group?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are reading-impaired. Gmane provides nntp access to mailing lists. As in, email.

"NO" to Google Groups

[jtara]

Don't foist Google Groups on your users.

Unfortuantely, it seems to be the default choice for tech-support forums. And it seems particularly poorly-suited for that task.

The bigget problem is not that it is way behind other forum software (it is) but the "cowboy" mentality of whoever pushes out a new version seemingly daily. It works one day, then it doesn't the next. Fortunately, with the daily release schedule, then it works again a few days later, but then it's different, and you have to figure out how to use it again.

Re:"NO" to Google Groups

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, Google has some nice features, but in some parts of the world you can't use it, China in particular doesn't allow you to use Google Groups AFAIK. An email solution or something similar is the right idea as email is available anywhere with access to the internet and as long as you're not posting state secrets tends to be fairly safe.

Re:"NO" to Google Groups

[Vegan Cyclist]

Agree totally, it's amazing how inconsistent its interface is...middle click (open in new tab) works one day, doesn't the next. How you view your groups changes regularly. Admin settings change at random. It's abysmal.

Worst of all is that they've removed the 'add user' feature. So now people have to be 'invited'. For someone with non-profits like me, i collect emails at a table at an event, and it's a nightmare trying to get them into the group. Now there appears (on some pages, depending on if it's the 'old' or 'new') you can add people again, but if it detects one error in an email address (it seems to know if a gmail address is legit or not), it fails...but it doesn't tell you which address is failing. So if you've got 10-20 in there (or heavens forbid, more), you get to try and figure out which one is the problem.

This really sucks because i've spent years with GG, building up lists, etc...and the last couple years they've been buffoons. So frustrating.

Re:Facebook...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did ya come up with that yourself or did your mom have to help you write it?

Wow. Sad.

[Frosty Piss]

The list members are hardware store owners and many are technically challenged...

That's really sad. Maybe I mean YOU for assuming such a low threshold...

Re:Wow. Sad.

[illumastorm]

You are also assuming that the GP has not had any first hand experience in assisting his users on how to use the site or other technical issues.

Re:Wow. Sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the one assuming everything here. The OP has actually dealt with the people he is talking about. Seems like you're a troll though. I hope so.

Re:Facebook...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a much better suggestion than motherfuckin usenet.

Sympa

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in a similar situation and am considering Sympa on a cheap VPS
http://www.sympa.org/

Has anyone used or have comments on Sympa?

Re:Sympa

[Anonymous Coward]

Sympa is the most advanced open source mailing list manager ever, meaning it might be somewhat complicated to get running at first time but there's almost nothing it cannot do. It is far superior compared to Mailman, the web interface integration is themeable and really well tightly integrated and so on and on, also has a nice, big and helpful community around it.

Re:vBulletin

[Anonymous Coward]

What a shit popsicle of a suggestion. You got to be kidding.

Try TinyLetter

[Anonymous Coward]

Try TinyLetter

tinyletter.com

Citadel

[Anonymous Coward]

CItadel (citadel.org) - it is a mailing list with a web front end!

Re:Citadel

[Sigg3.net]

FLOSS Weekly over at twit.tv just featured Citadel.Gives a nice presentation of its (too many?) features.

Quick Plug for FUD

[Shaman]

Just a quick and dirty plug for FUDForum. Real forum, with NNTP and mailing list integration tools. Very fast, flexible attachment abilities and can convert any thread to PDF.

try nabble

[Anonymous Coward]

Unable.com

USENET

[Anonymous Coward]

You might have read about this old technology called news servers such as used with the USENET system? Personally, I hate discussion boards and forums in a web browser. Give me USENET and newsgroups accessible via a newsreader whether from the command-line or GUI. Listservers are another nightmare best forgotten.

Mailman

[andyring]

'nuf said.

Mailman is about as simple as they come. I maintain several mailman lists, a bunch of which were for my church. As I was wanting to get away from being the sole volunteer tech guy for a 1,500-member church, I showed a couple secretaries how to manage the lists. That was 2 years ago and I haven't looked back.

Re:Mailman

[Anonymous Coward]

Feminist might object to Mailman though.

Re:Slashdot effect? What slashdot effect?

[gnapster]

Actually, there was an article that slashdotted a page just yesterday; it was the one about Steve Jobs' influence on Google+.

drupal

[Anonymous Coward]

will scale easily, lots of options

Online Groups/Group Server

[pravi.a]

onlinegroups.net used to be free, but they have become paid hosting recently. I liked their software, Group Server. It has very nice archives and web interface. You can install it on a server too. It is Free/Libre Software. Other two options are freelists.org and librelist.com.

Re:Online Groups/Group Server

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second freelists.org. Web UI isn't great but their service is.

Ask Slashdot a stupid question: Best solution

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFY. Here let me google that for you.

Forums? Noooo... the OP Said Mail List

[rally2xs]

Lots of talk of forum software and usenet and the like, but the OP said he wants an e-mail list. That is Yahoo Groups, not web-based solutions.

Yahoogroups has a web interface for each mailing list, but you don't have to use it, not even to join the list. It is ultra-simple to use. If you want to join a yahoogroup mailing list at XXX@yahoogroups.com, you'd send an e-mail message to XXX-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. To unsubscribe, XXX-unsubscribe.com. People joining this way can't use the web page until they obtain a (free) Yahoo ID and log in, and eventually the site will associate their e-mail address with those yahoogroups that they've joined via sending an email message as already described.

Yahoogroups has, on their web pages for each e-mail list, a calendar that can be populated with significant events on their dates of occurrence, give notifications of these events to the mailing list at user-defined times in advance of the events, has a links area that may be populated with relevant links, has a files area that can be populated with relevant files, and so forth.

I don't think there's a better solution out there for an e-mail list that will send members messages to their inbox, rather than their having to go to some webpage to find the messages, possibly 3 days after the message was posted. Some fora send e-mail notifications of new messages on the fora, but then why not just send message in the email in the 1st place?

I think Yahoogroups is _the_ e-mail mailing list solution.

Re:First Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

If two Anonymous Cowards talk to one another, does anybody hear them?

Only if a non-anonymous troll-feeder responds to their posts.

Nabble

[Anonymous Coward]

Try nabble.

People still use email lists

[bwhalen]

I loathe web forums, very much preferring email lists. Based on sites I have seen though, it really seems like mailing lists are going the way of the dodo bird, being replaced by web forums.

Re:People still use email lists

[Robert Zenz]

Not really, they're still there, they just moved a little bit into the background...you know, more for technical people and stuff.

Sympa!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sympa is by far the most advanced, open source licensed mailing list manager I've found so far. It is written in Perl, well maintained, stable and used to power lists with over 700.000 recipients.

Featuers include:

Original features :
scalable for big mailings lists ( > 700.000 list members)
list member provisioning using LDAP, SQL or other data sources
various authentication method (SSO, LDAP, X509)
S/MIME and DKIM
web archive with access control, message removal etc
virtual hosting for service providers.
automatic bounce management
easily customizable web interface
SOAP interface for integration with other applications

and much more.

Check it out at www.sympa.org

I've got an idea...

[clockwise_music]

Twitter?

Re:I've got an idea...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Twitter?

This being Slashdot... I would've recommended posting that anonymously.

Re:I've got an idea...

[ThatsMyNick]

Or, gasp, Facebook groups (provides email notifications and a decent web interlace). Both work well with a non-tech audience.

Re:I've got an idea...

[tehcyder]

Or, gasp, Facebook groups (provides email notifications and a decent web interlace). Both work well with a non-tech audience.

I think that sound I can hear is a thousand slashdotters sharpening their pitchforks and lighting their torches.

groups dot yahoo dot com

[beachdog]

I prefer the Yahoo groups email service over the Google version. I have started several email groups and the Yahoo version is better because of little administrative advantages and easier subscription management.

The whole world of email groups, blogs and web forums most emphatically does not work in the long run for organizing crowd learning. (I recently waded through hours worth of Ubuntu Forums looking for a wireless connection bug fix. Twenty posts by twenty relative newcomers is not as good as two posts and a good index maintained by two thoughtful knowledgeable editors.)

How about this: Wouldn't it be neat if you as the email group administrator could add to each email a footer. The footer would be links to web pages or "best of" summary pages. I don't think you can do that with Yahoo groups.

I think a very interesting email group processing engine would be some way to organize the semantic confusion that always develops when many people post writings about the same thing. The reciprocal thought for you to consider is what is the underlying off stage issue that your entire message experience supports.

But the email group can enable small groups to coordinate themselves faster than a newsletter.

An email group needs an external leadership. I set up an email group that was parallel to a ham radio club's established monthly PDF newsletter and established culture of a monthly meeting and interpersonal project making. The email group is mostly unused. The kind of dialogue the club engages in doesn't fit with what an email group does best.

Here is a thought: An email group works best if the "who" and "what" of an email message can be expressed in 9 words or less. The "when" of an email group message is always "soon".

The charm of a Yahoo group is they are free, very reliable, have good controls to exclude spam, diplomatic ways to constrain individuals with content quality problems. One weakness is users with email readers that open all links in every email message can unsubscribe themselves accidentally. There is no way in Yahoo groups for the group administrator to find the names of those who unsubscribe themselves.

How about SquadMail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Free of charge, automatic syncing and integratable with Gmail (and other mailservices). Though I don't know if this is truly what OP wants, it might be an alternative. https://www.squadmail.com/ :-)

Mailing list + Gmane

[Ed Avis]

Set up a mailing list with a list manager such as GNU mailman, and then add it to Gmane to provide a web interface, and searching. (Gmane is also a mail-to-nntp gateway, but you don't have to use that part.)

Ask your ISP

[tbannist]

If you want it hosted off site, ask your ISP. A business grade ISP should have a mail list system that they run and all you need to do is transfer your mailing list over to it. The advantage is you're not running the list and people who know what they're doing should be running it. Additionally, you'll be working with people you already have a business relationship with running it, however, check the price first. Sometimes list services have wonky pricing.

Of course, if you don't like your ISP, you may not want to do that. However, why are you dealing with them at all in that case?

Re:Ask your ISP

[petermgreen]

Of course, if you don't like your ISP, you may not want to do that. However, why are you dealing with them at all in that case?

IME large ISPs give by far the best bang for your buck on connectivity BUT the competent people are burried behind a wall of support drones. If I was going to get a mailing list hosted commercially (personally i'd rather do it myself on a rented vm or dedicated server) I would want it to be done by a smaller company where competant people are more likely to be accessible.

Sympa

[Stakkato.Dot]

I'm in a similar situation and am evaluating Sympa with a low cost VPS http://www.sympa.org/ It looks to have a good web interface, customizable, and scalable to a decent size. I'm surprised no one has mentioned it. Mailman is pretty standard but is dated and not very user friendly. Customization seems difficult.

Citadel

[wwbbs]

Well if the Google Group thing does not meet your use case and neither does the standard mailman perhaps you want to look at something called Citadel the product is quite stable and very usable. www.citadel.org best of all open source "Citadel is easy, versatile, and powerful, thanks to its exclusive "rooms" based architecture. No other platform seamlessly combines so many different features using this familiar and consistent metaphor. Packed with features email calendar/scheduling address books bulletin boards (forums) mailing list server instant messaging wiki and blog engines multiple domain support a powerful web interface see the full feature list..."

Re:First Post!

[cpu6502]

- 2 overrated
It was a JOKE people. Jeez.

Re:First Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Given your extremely open disdain for any and all ACs, I suspect that you are simply trying to back-peddle now.

Linux and mailman?

[whitroth]

I've on a bunch of lists that run this way, some fairly large, though not in the thousands.

Or you *could* start a moderated newsgroup - I mean, usenet hasn't gone away....

              mark

Better than Google groups

[northbaychronic]

http://forum.opalang.org/ It looks pretty cool, and it is based on MongoDB so it is scalable as you asked for. You can download your own instance and host it offsite. Since it is still a pilot program, a preview is available for free if you want