[Asterisk-Users] asterisk newsgrup proposal or phpBB forum

[Steven Critchfield]

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 15:52 -0600, Joe Greco wrote:
> > Not everyone has decent access to NNTP either due to firewalls coporate
> > or otherwise 
> 
> That's why many news servers allow access on alternate ports.  :-)

On a proper network firewall, it is deny all, allow these few ports. So
unless you are running NNTP on a port like 80 or 443, it probably will
be blocked. Even then a good admin would have a proxy in place to help
cut down the bandwidth usage and would therefore break NNTP.

> > or are under a quota due to the amount of illegal activity
> > that appears there. Add to it the inability to control spam or kick an
> > unruley users if the need arises. NNTP doesn't solve any problems, and
> > phpBB creates a bunch.
> > 
> > Better question is why do you feel there needs to be a change?
> 
> You've missed some "best of breed" options.
> 
> A newsgroup by itself may or may not be useful.  However, either way, 
> USENET (which isn't entirely limited to NNTP, incidentally) has a bunch of
> powerful clients that are designed from the ground up for participating in
> large threaded discussions.  This is a major failing of many mail clients.
> I find it easier to follow large discussions with the text-based trn 
> newsreader than with any graphical mail client I've seen to date - bar 
> none - and trn is old technology.  Just the thread tree view itself is so
> useful, not to mention one-key cruising through the tree nodes.

Who said mail needs to be graphical? I know a great many people still
using mutt for their mail and it probably will resemble trn close enough
for your taste. Of course there are plenty of graphical email readers
that support threaded views. I happen to use evolution with threads
turned on and enjoy it.

Your right, threaded trees are great. I love it when there is enough
people using correct enough software to help keep the information
correct. Of course we get to the same problem here that not all software
mail or nntp actually puts the in-reply-to or references headers in to
make the tree view work.

> Many sites gateway various mailing lists into local hierarchies, for the
> explicit purpose of solving some of the problems that "NNTP doesn't solve",
> because the medium was designed to deal with the functional equivalent of
> mailing list traffic from day one.

Gateway mailing lists to local hierarchies to solve problems that
hierarchies doesn't solve? Sounds like broken hacks to me. Maybe in your
rush through that sentence your meaning didn't get fully expressed.

As for the design, like many older technologies, NNTP was designed
before the unrulely behavior of spammers. While I know there are some
private nntp servers that enable authentication to protect themselves,
it isn't the norm.  

> You can avoid some of the problems of public newsgroups by making it a one-
> way gateway, with moderator pointing back at the original list, therefore
> subject to all the normal list posting controls.

And a limit on what a moderator will be able to handle unless it is a
program, and then it wouldn't take a moment to get past it. Not that
email is any more secure.

> Setting up a one-way gateway isn't too difficult.  Is there interest?  I
> can certainly start one.  We already do all the FreeBSD lists and a bunch
> of other stuff here.

I belive there has already been one with URL posted in this thread.

-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>