[tor-talk] Until there's a REAL effing way to communicate, that evey1 can use, I'm DONE

[adrelanos]

Warren Michelsen:
> On Jun 17, 2013, at 5:14 PM, Cat S <catslovetor at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> This mailing-list is a stupid fucking joke, well, at least for
>> those of us who aren't techies. Really, this is stupid, you're not
>> allowing a lot of people to community by using this Ivory tower
>> mailing-list crap.
> 
> Personally, I've only recently become interested in Tor and I was
> *happy* to see that its community uses a mailing list rather than a
> forum. To each his own. No need to remember yet another log-in, and
> each posting s sent directly to me. What could be more convenient?

> I'm not sure where you're coming from. Why can't non-techies use
> email?!? How is this mailing list preventing a lot of people from
> communicating?

I think the mailman interface, if you never saw it before, and never
managed to get through it, doesn't look very welcoming and newbie friendly.

In a forum, its contents advertise itself and they get well indexed by
search engines. Things are sorted by topics. For a mailing list you have
to click on archives to see if people are using it at all and about what
kind of topics they are talking.

High traffic mailing lists have the disadvantage, that you also need a
decent mail client (another question first to be sorted out for newbies)
and/or decent filter rules to ignore threads you're not interested in.
In a forum thats different, you only participate threads you're
interested in.

> You're clearly frustrated about something, I'm not sure what and,
> despite the length of your tirade, you failed to explain why a
> mailing list is (in your opinion) "ivory tower" and beyond the
> capabilities of non-techies.
> 
> Okay, we get it, you prefer forum software of some kind, but why?

> Why
> is email so terrible?

The arguments most times are (not necessarily mine):

E-mail is more difficult to register when using Tor.

> Why is a forum superior for those you deem non
> technical?

More eye candy.

People can more easily make just a single anonymous answer or thread
without any registration or other trail. On the other hand, one could
argue, that its a feature of a mailing list, that it encourages
pseudonymous rather than anonymous use.