annoying Kolab things

[ITSEF Admin]

On Tuesday 20 March 2007 16:52, Marco wrote:
[...]
> - Mailinglist
> 	As I think, today Mailinglists are obsolete because of these reasons:
> 	1. 	Today the biggest part of all email traffic is spam. Therefor many
> ISP's have installed own Spamfilters. Because of this you can't tell if a
> mail sent to a mailing list will arrive to every member.

I never had ISPs filter our mailing lists - if the list is configured 
properly, mails will usually pass the filters, unless they are especially 
braindead.


> 	2.	Mailinglists are bad references. I know it is possible to brows the
> 		Mailinglist archive on your page, but hey..... Month by month by hand
> ?!!! This means Users have to ask the same question again and again 'cause
> nobody wants to search in the archives.

Firstly, the lists are also searched using the "Search" box on the home page, 
thought this is apparently little known and the results are still difficult 
to read.
However, there are excellent archives available at MARC:
http://marc.info/?l=kolab-users&r=1&w=2 - maybe this could be made a bit more 
public?

BTW: IMO, this very point applies equally to web forums - folks who are too 
lazy to search will always be too lazy to search, no matter the medium.


> 	3.	Mail programs are adding characters to the beginning of every line
> 		when you reply to an email. This makes it impossible to read a whole
> 		conversation thread	if it there where many participators.

Only if you have a bad mail client. Good ones can deal with this.


> 	In my opinion a web forum would be a much bether solution.

A web forum requires me to either go there to check for new entries frequently 
(which requires more of my resources to do so) or works with reminder mails 
whenever new content has arrived - which is nonsense, because in that case 
receiving the actual mail with the actual content (like with a mailing list) 
would have been much more useful and faster. In my experience, mailing lists 
are *much* faster, as all content arrives right at my door. Add some filters 
and let me choose my own client with my own favourite editor and therefore my 
own favourite interface - as opposed to some fixed web forum interface - and 
they are also easier to use. In addition, as I can choose the client, mailing 
lists always work, even in a text-only environment. So, my vote (if there 
ever is one needed) is for mailing lists.

Cheerio,

Thomas