[Leica] [OFF-TOPIC] Managing LUG archives

[phong@doan-ltd.com (phong)]

Mary (de Milo) (MGMcGough@aol.com) wrote regarding Philip Greenspun's photo.net:

>>  Actually the big advantage that his magnificent site has over Brian Reids
>>  is that it is a WWW site while Brians is more of an automatic email system
>>  and is limited to all the restrictions of email.  There have been many LUG
>>  participants that have offered suggestions and two that have actually set-up
>>  their own; one being an  interesting emailer and the other a fine web site.

    Actually, I would not use a Web site as the _only_ forum for this kind of
    communication.  As it is, I subscribe only to the digest format of the LUG
    which takes about a minute or two to download from my ISP.  There are times
    when accessing a Web site is quite of the question for me (for example,
    when I travel and stay in hotels with extravagant phone charges, or when
    I am using a modem over a poor phone connection).

    The Medium Format Forum offers the best of both worlds: a web site using
    the photo.net model and software, and an automatic email system, with
    digest options for subscribers.  You don't need a web browser to use
    the system; when you email to the list, your message is posted to the
    web automatically.  As a subscriber, you would not do anything differently
    that you currently are.

    One concern I would have with using a web site is protection from commercial
    spammers who collect email addresses from web sites.  photo.net solves the
    problem by allowing aliases, whereby only your penname appears on the web 
    site.  But this solution spawns problems of its own.  It's not perfect, but
    it's far better than what we have.

- - Phong