I set up the BackupCentral forum <-> BackupPC mailing list gateway about two
years ago, at the same time I did this for several other open-source products.
Although not everyone on every list likes the idea, the general consensus on
most of the lists has been that it is a Good Thing. Sure there are a few
people that don't like it, but the vast majority realize that some people would
rather use forums instead of email, and welcome their input to the community.
Since this particular list happens to have a very vocal minority expressing
dis-satisfaction with the link, let me explain a few things in hopes of
improving relations. If we can't do that, I'll sever the link and we'll part
ways.
BackupPC is an open-source project, and such projects generally welcome any and
all comers to their community, as more people generally means more help, etc.
If you don't know, BackupPC is visited by over 60,000 unique people every month
and has well over a million page views per month, and I send a lot of traffic
to http://backuppc.sourceforge.net every single day. One of the reasons for
this is that the most frequently searched for phrase that takes people to
BackupCentral is "free backup software."
No, the gateway software (mail2forum.com) isn't perfect, but it is the best
I've found out there. My biggest complaint is that it doesn't know how to put
an "Re:" in front of a subject line so that it will thread properly in Outlook
or similar client. (It actually can, but because it strips off the
[BackupPC-Users] header only to have it put back on by the list, the "Re:" gets
put after the [BackupPC-Users] string, not before it.)
I took a look at the messages that went to the list from the forum for the past
six months. The first thing I would like to say is that the vast majority of
posts from Backup Central have been standard questions and answers. You don't
notice those, though. I looked especially close at the ones that seemed to
generate the most ire. It wasn't necessarily that they replied to messages
without quoting any of the original message, although I encourage them not to
do that. It was that the message they were replying to was so old that it
wouldn't have been in most people's email clients anyway. In one case, a user
was replying to his own post to say "Anyone?" and the original post was almost
two months old. In another case, someone posted a "me too" post to a post that
was two YEARS old! While this is perfectly normal behavior in a forum, it is
NOT normal behavior in a mailing list. (Not that it's wrong; it just doesn't
happen.)
I have taken a lot of steps to minimize the impact of using a forum on a
mailing list. I have put special code in and a human spam filter to stop at
least that problem, and it's been 100% successful so far. I also make sure the
subject line matches the original posts, although I can't fix the "Re:"
problem. So while they don't thread perfectly, it's relatively obvious what
they're replying to if you're using a standard email client. I also wrote some
code that sends them a message about how the forums and emails are connected
and how they should respond. Finally, I have now put a "READ BEFORE POSTING"
sticky on the forum that shows up at the top.
Some have requested a header up front. The software I'm using doesn't support
that, but it does support a footer. If you're looking for a way to completely
ignore posts from the list, then all you have to do is ignore messages from the
email address "backuppc-forum AT backupcentral DOT com" as all forum messages
come from that email address.
I would urge you instead to take the VERY SMALL MINORITY of messages that fit
into the "they replied wrong" category, and just hit the DELETE key, without
replying to them with snide comments that suggest that they are an idiot simply
for using Backup Central to interface to the list. Please understand that if a
person is asking a question via the BackupCentral forum, they probably FOUND
YOU via Backup Central. So the way some of you (and one of you in particular)
respond to their very first post seems a rather rude way to welcome a new
member of the community. In addition, I've never understood the logic of
protesting one worthless email by replying to the list with a number of other
worthless emails. Explain to me how that helps anyone.
In closing, I offer the following. Please reply to this email or send me a
private one to wcurtispreston AT gmail DOT com to tell me what you think. If
you don't see what all the fuss is about, then please say so. If you'd like to
tell me to go pound sand, then say so. I say this because I think the vast
majority of you are fine with things the way they are. If I'm right, we'll
leave things the way they are. If I'm wrong, I'll sever the link and you will
lose all the people that come to your community via BackupCentral. I again
don't see how that's going to help anyone either.
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|This was sent by wcplists1 AT gmail DOT com via Backup Central.
|Forward SPAM to abuse AT backupcentral DOT com.
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BackupPC-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
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