Is Vanilla the end of mailing lists?
yeehi
New
From what I can see, the dominant (maybe only) way developers collaborate on a project is by a mailing list. If a forum is available too, the developers do not access it, and stick to their mailbox. The main reason for this, I believe, is that they do not want to have to visit several places to get their information. Some developers also prefer that their information be presented in isolation from "distractions" that might be found on the web.
Vanilla does have functionality that allows integration of a mailing list.
1) Considering all the benefits that Vanilla offers for discussions, how do you think we can persuade people who ordinarily use mailing lists to move to Vanilla?
2) For those who have integrated mailing lists into Vanilla, can some of the nice functionality in Vanilla be accessed when the discussions are only viewed in a mail client, like gmail or Thunderbird? For example, is ranking / sorting of posts by popularity possible?
3) (I have seen one project discussion where the back end is just a mailing list and this mailing list is forwarded to Drupal Advanced Forum. I wonder whether it might be better to make the back end Vanilla Forum and then have the posts also forwarded by e-mail.)
Comments
No. For some things, mailing lists are more convenient, because it is a push mechanism, whereas with any web-based content, you have to go there to get it.
I believe that Vanilla can be set up so that it automatically forwards posts to subscribers (push). You can post to Vanilla by e-mail, too.
Do you have a link to the plugin that does that?
There is a feature in Vanilla Advanced and Enterprise plans called vanillapop - Vanilla POP.
It lets you:
1) Send an email to create a discussion
2) Reply to an emailed discussion on the forum or through email
3) Have conversations through email, but keep a record on Vanilla
I had a quick look for you but couldn't find a link.
so, how would somebody get a hold of something like this or build it themselves? This sounds like an amazing application.
The fact is people were given the best of both world (federated, and with proper traceable history, with the bonus of operational transforms) google wave, now apache wave. it came too soon, and people didn't release the significance, so it bombed.
Despite email being 40 years old, people are still stuck in they ways. It is a poor way of communicating, becuase it is directly analogous to snail mail, and has most of it limitations.
Forums an bbs are here to stay for the time being.
grep is your friend.
How about a usenet ↔ Vanilla plugin?