
Mailman 3.0 to modernize mailing lists - jordigh
http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/638090/0229275ea355532b/
======
erglkjahlkh
I am not sure about modernizing. I am all for developing core applications
like mailman, but I fail to see great value in this piece of execution.

Post voting is bad for fact oriented discussions, popularity is a poor
indicator for the value of a post. The user interface is cramped, and hides
too much of valuable information I would expect to see instantly. Also, the
looks are from previous decade (looks like sf.net clone to me) and not very
aesthetic.

Sure, this might be a step forward nevertheless, but it is a really small one.

~~~
andrewstuart2
To me the huge step here is the RESTful API, assuming it is indeed RESTful.
Having access to data that's structured naturally and less like a full-on
layout document (HTML) means that any developer can trivially grab the
underlying data and do whatever they want with it.

~~~
andrewstuart
You again! My alter ego. I've actually been doing quite alot of development
against the Mailman 3 REST API. It's well thought out and works nicely.

------
dtech
Can't wait for this. It currently might be released as a final after PyCon
2015, meaning it could be here this month.

We've been waiting for this to replace our ancient ecartis manager
([https://launchpad.net/ecartis](https://launchpad.net/ecartis)). While the UI
doesn't look extremely pretty, compared to ecartis it will be like moving from
1999 to 2008 or so.

------
jordigh
There is also dlang's forum software:

[https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed](https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed)

It really is a web interface to mailing lists and NNTP (NNTP!!). And it's damn
fast. Flies like the wind:

[http://forum.dlang.org/](http://forum.dlang.org/)

~~~
rando3826
The first link describes it as "D news aggregator, newsgroup client, web
newsreader and IRC bot." I don't see anything about mailing list. And at
first, I thought the D part meant that was customized to be just for the D
project's uses. But thinking about it, it sounds like it's because it was
written in D?

------
golem_de
[https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mailman-
coders/mailman/3.0/vie...](https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mailman-
coders/mailman/3.0/view/head:/src/mailman/model/user.py) Line 56: _password =
Column('password', Unicode)

~~~
rspeer
Most of the way I'm reminded that a list I'm on uses Mailman is that it mails
me my password in plain text every month.

So, it's unfortunate, but it's nothing new.

~~~
rbehrends
As I understand it from the write-up (and a brief look at the source seems to
confirm that), Mailman 3.0 does encrypt passwords by default and does not mail
them out any longer.

It is stored in unicode because that's what passlib hash algorithms return,
not because there's an underlying plaintext representation.

~~~
hobarrera
It hashes password.

Encrypting them indicates there's a way to decrypt them. Hashing, by
definition, is not possible (not practical, really).

------
SwellJoe
I've always liked Mailman a lot, and prefer mailing lists to web forums, but
we've just recently made the decision to not enable it by default in
Virtualmin (for the past 12+ years, we've enabled it on every install and made
it easy for non-privileged users to create new lists and such). But, when we
recently assessed how many of our customers were actually using it vs the
resources it requires, we can't justify it.

This new version doesn't alter the reality that very few website owners want
mailing lists, anymore. But, it makes me want to start some new mailing lists
(I don't currently maintain any Mailman mailing lists, though in the past I
was wrangling dozens of them).

The UI looks great, and the new architectural changes sound great, too. It's
long overdue, though.

------
legulere
When I look at this screenshot [1], it seems to suffer the same issue as LWN:
After around 100 characters the text should begin on a new line, not after it
filled the screen. One can complain about lots of rules designers use, but
this one is actually scientifically backed up. I wonder why so many websites
still do this wrong, maybe web developer tools in browsers should throw
warnings?

[1] [http://lwn.net/Articles/638228/](http://lwn.net/Articles/638228/)

------
reuven
I used Mailman for more than 10 years, to run a fairly large (3,000-person)
list. Before that, I had used a number of other mailing list managers.

It's true that Mailman was rock solid. But it had a number of features that
made it difficult for users and administrators alike.

In particular, users who were not computer savvy complained bitterly that they
couldn't easily search through the archives, couldn't understand how to
subscribe and unsubscribe themselves, and that the archives (in their repeated
messages to the moderators) didn't look like the mailing lists on Google and
Yahoo.

In other words, it wasn't sufficient to have solid software. Mailman needed a
modern UI. It took some time, but that moment seems to have come. It's a bit
too late for me; for a variety of reasons (many having nothing to do with
Mailman), I recently moved my mailing list to Google Groups.

I'm very happy to see this new set of functionality aimed at making Mailman
relevant for a new generation of users. Kudos to the maintainers for sticking
with the project, and for providing a valuable service that shouldn't need to
be outsourced to third parties. And for not only pushing forward with the
internals, but also on the UI. It looks quite snazzy and impressive, and
should help to keep Mailman relevant for many more years.

~~~
hobarrera
> [...] the archives didn't look like the mailing lists on Google and Yahoo.

IMHO, this is a feature, and an important one, not something bad.

------
kolev
How is it any more modern than GroupServer [0], for example? I was looking for
some mailing list software, mailman looked pretty dated, now it will look
newer, and, yet, not modern, but I ended up using Groups.io [1] at the end.

[0] [http://groupserver.org/](http://groupserver.org/)

[1] [https://groups.io/](https://groups.io/)

------
ksk
Does anyone have any suggestions for a good GUI tool to read mailman archives?
(offline usage + indexing/search)

~~~
feld
Download the archives and import into your personal email and use whichever
email client you prefer.

------
Hz8NSD
In my case, so many search result are on pipermail. So I really want to see
pipermail's interface to be improved. It looks like failed.

I would rather recommend [http://discourse.org](http://discourse.org) for
anyone who finding mailing list + nice web and mobile interface.

------
maxerickson
I hope that people turn on the post to list feature in the web viewer.

(because there really are lot of mailing lists where the desire of the core
users to stick with their own mail setup is understandable but at odds with
making it easy to capture more casual contributions)

------
Afforess
I don't think mailing lists have a future. There is no new adoption of mailing
lists, newer developers (those under 30) use other forums for communication
(stackoverflow, github, etc) and mailing lists will eventually just die out as
the generations of developers do.

I am not trying to criticize mailing lists, they definitely have a lot of
advantages over some of the newer systems that have grown to replace them.
Without organic growth from new developers though, mailing lists are doomed to
become a relic of a distant time. To most developers, they already are.

~~~
icebraining
In my opinion, as an under-30 developer myself, and I don't see neither SO nor
Github replacing mailing lists for broader discussions; SO is very
specifically about the nitty-gritty, and while Github issues can accommodate
them to a degree, they're not as suited, in my opinion.

For those of you who don't use mailing lists, what do you use instead for
these discussions?

~~~
prawn
As Afforess said, forums.

I used to be subscribed to a number of mailing lists maybe a decade ago, but
none now. The signal:noise ratio is generally pretty terrible for anyone
pressed for time.

~~~
icebraining
What makes the SnR ratio so different for forums vs mailing lists? I haven't
noticed, frankly.

I agree with Jeff Atwood: forum software is generally pretty terrible. The
difference being that I don't find his better - the way it actively prevents
people from reading offline is enough to make me extremely frustrated.

------
TD-Linux
I don't really think it's appropriate to use LWN subscriber links on HN, by
the way.

~~~
maxerickson
It perhaps something to be thoughtful about, but sharing the links isn't in
itself inappropriate.

Here's the LWN editor commenting on it, and their own posting history:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689018)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=corbet](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=corbet)

