Because we're a bunch of neo-luddites bent on world domination, and plan on destroying everything electronic once we achieve our goals! Bwahahahahahaha!
Seriously, it's the least bad of all the options, by a rather significant margin. If you want to just follow around, there are web-based and NNTP archives of the mailing lists, and Sean Burke set up an RSS feed for them. Things are about as open as you can get. | [reply] |
it's the least bad of all the options, by a rather significant margin
Hmm. Can you (or anyone) point me at a discussion of what makes it the least bad option? Not necessarially for Perl related stuff, just why mailing lists in general, (which from my perspective have so many inherent problems and literally zero benefits), are the preferred choice. I'm not trying to start a debate *here*. I'd just like to understand the rational.
Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller
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Well, list the alternatives:
- NNTP-transports (though not necessarily part of the Great Usenet Cloud)
- Web-boards (such as, but not necessarily like, perlmonks)
- Phone calls
- In-person meetings
We can toss out the last two easily enough. Having solid, permanent records of either is a pain, and actually participating in either is also very limiting. #4 is geographically limiting, and #3 is financially limiting. (Conference calls are expensive to set up, and expensive for many users to participate in, so they're out.
#2, web boards, are more accessible, but they suffer from a requirement to be online to participate, and actually doing so requires dealing with the godawful user-torturing editing widgets that the browsers inflict on people. Yes, I know, some Clever People use Emacs as a browser, but 99.9% of the folks are stuck with a Netscape, Mozilla, or IE variant, and they all suck.
#1, news, generally requires you to be online as well to participate, though at least most newsreaders have decent editors, and let you use an external editor if they don't. Some (very few) newsreaders let you work off-line, but they're quite rare.
Mail is really the only option that has the combination of good editors, off-line usage, decent web archiving, and NNTP gatewaying, giving the broadest group of people access to the discussion. (A well-administered NNTP system, with a mail gateway, is about equivalent, though slightly more trouble to set up)
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