Hari's Corner

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On Mailing Lists

Filed under: Software and Technology by Hari
Posted on Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 13:39 IST (last updated: Wed, Aug 29, 2012 @ 13:48 IST)

PaperI don't want to sound churlish, but I really don't like electronic mailing lists. I haven't subscribed to a mailing list in ages, but recently I volunteered for a documentation project, which required me to subscribe to their mailing lists. Very soon, I got quite irritated by the flood of new messages in my mailbox every time I opened it: this apart from the usual "spam." It's become increasingly difficult to use e-mail for any practical communication because there's too much noise. That's part of the reason why I have a different (and relatively private) e-mail ID for my professional purposes.

It's 2012, web forums have been around for ages, and people still stick to a relatively primitive technology for online discussions, particularly for project development.

I don't deny that mailing lists are simple and easy to use. But they are annoying for some reasons:

  1. Constant stream of new mails awaiting you whenever you open your mailbox. I know mails can be filtered and categorized, but as a POP user, I still find it annoying to have to download them.
  2. Mailing list's digest mode is less annoying (though updates are still frequent enough), but make it practically more difficult to follow the flow of conversations and to reply to individual mails.
  3. Past discussions or topics are difficult to refer to. Of course, mailing lists have a web archive, but those are clunky to read. A long mailing list thread can descend into several levels of quotes that make it hard to read.
  4. People don't maintain a single standard for replying to quotes. Some people top post, while others bottom post. This makes readability quite hard.
  5. Finally, mailing lists expose my e-mail to potentially hundreds of subscribers. I am not very comfortable sharing my e-mail ID with everybody. Using "throwaway" e-mail IDs specifically for mailing lists are inconvenient and an added hassle, particularly because I prefer to read mails from my mail client.

To be honest, others don't find these issues particularly bothersome, but I've been used to the unobtrusive nature of web forums where I don't face a deluge of mails in my inbox and I can always follow discussions or topics at leisure from a convenient web interface.

Web forums might have their faults, but to me, mailing lists, particularly in this era of spam, are no longer desirable forms of online discussions.

2 comment(s)

  1. Amen! (approval of this comment not needed)

    Comment by Justa Notha (visitor) on Sun, Sep 2, 2012 @ 02:52 IST #
  2. Justa Notha, I've approved your earlier comments. On this blog, as a spam prevention measure, comments from users who haven't already existing approved comments are placed in the moderation queue, that is, for older posts.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Sun, Sep 2, 2012 @ 08:29 IST #

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