biliii wrote:
listserv is a much better "tool" than what chiffandfipple is currently running on which is PhpBB, a php implementation of mysql, it's basically a database, for goodness sake. it's a web app and fun, goofy more tailored to users with little experience outside the "web".
I think Usenet is much better than listservs.
Usenet is just a big fat pipe of articles, and all the organization is managed at the end, by a specialized program on your home computer. Hence you have complete control over what you see.
There are dozens to hundreds of these newsreader programs, many are free, and they come in all levels of usability, sophistication, etc. They are designed for handling huge volumes of blather. With a Usenet reader, I can go through hundreds of articles in half an hour and sift out just what I want.
The newsreader I use, called
trn, displays an unobtrusive little graph of each thread in the corner, showing who replied to whom and the general shape of the conversation. It can also handle very complex filtering rules. I have it set up so that when this one crackpot posts to sci.crypt, his articles are filtered and so are any articles posted in reply to him, and any articles posted in reply to those, etc. This cleans out both the initial post and all of the corresponding flamefest.
Caj