Re: [Nolug] Nolug on G+?

On 8/12/12, Joey Kelly <joey@joeykelly.net> wrote:
> How much spam have we gotten in the last, oh, 13 years? How many "me too!"
> posts?
> My point is this... forums (we had one, years ago) and facebook offer little
> to no barrier to entry... it seems to me that mailing lists seem to weed out

Yes, but that's both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Higher barrier entry = you fly under the radar, but fewer people
become aware of your existence = fewer users = smaller quantity of
input as well.

I know that spammers target addresses I have subscribed only to
mailing lists, probably by extracting From e-mail addresses of posts
that are printed in public archives with only the most trivial of
address obfuscation techniques, such as "user_at_example.com" or
"user at example.com".

And very few cases where a spammer ever subb'ed directly to a list --
it's really no surprise that there would be little direct spam; ask
that question when your mailing list has 50000 members maybe.

> the idiots and the drive-by cluelessness that forums breed.

Use the right tool for the right job.

Forums have another problem, in that keeping a reliable personal copy
of the discussion for future reference is very inefficient for users,
 participants are forced to use a web browser to compose responses
which has quirks like no way to save a draft, in-progress work is
lost if browser crashes or login session times out; forum software
is also often architected in a manner that allows people to "tamper"
 with the conversation, for example, by deleting or changing
content after it's been sent, or "freezing" a discussion so new
content can be added, even when there is still beneficial input to be
made.

And pages become cluttered with annoyances such as HTML, "avatars"
and graphical signatures. In other words: not all bells and
whistles are good ones.

I would say that Forums and Social networking sites are for very short
temporal conversations and sharing of time-sensitive information
that you wouldn't ever need to keep a long-term record of.

But they can do things that are very useful or more efficient than
what mailing lists can do.

Mailing lists are for serious discussions, debates, and anything
requiring a large amount of text to be exchanged.

> OK, so I had to lock down the wiki due to scripted pharmacy spam, but you
> get
> my point.
>
> --
> Joey Kelly

--
-JH
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