mail-list vs news, was Re: [plug] Looks like the LCA DVD is out.

[Joel Johnson]

> With an online newsreader, you don't have to download all the message
> bodies. However, of course, we have web archives for that anyway. I
> certainly do like the idea of having an NNTP server for PLUG, but I also
> believe that the small size of PLUG means that we don't benefit from
> fine-grained group demarcations. So, a one-list NNTP server is not much
> better than the web archives. Perhaps its only advantage (over the web
> archives) would be integration of the reply mechanism with your regular
> news/mail client(s).
>
The other advantage of NNTP server is that threads are kept together - ie no
need to trawl through all the Gmail invites no matter what the Subject line
is. The threading is great for being able to follow the flow of the various
conversations that are happening.