Is it a newsgroup or a list?

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 07 June 2015 09:57:55 Tim Golden wrote:
> On 07/06/2015 12:20, random832 at fastmail.us wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 7, 2015, at 05:06, Luca Menegotto wrote:
> >> Il 07/06/2015 10:22, Cecil Westerhof ha scritto:
> >>   > That only times the function. I explicitly mentioned I want
> >>   > both the needed time AND the output.
> >>   >
> >>   > Sadly the quality of the answers on this list is going down....
> >>
> >> First of all, thank God it's a newsgroup, not a list.
> >
> > ...
> >
> >> --
> >> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> >
> > I've always thought of this as a list that is mirrored to a
> > newsgroup, not a newsgroup that is mirrored to a list. What is the
> > true nature of python-list (and others such as python-ideas)? What
> > is it primarily, what was it first, etc?
>
> It's both: they're mirrored to each other and I consider both to be
> first class citizens. In strict chronology I believe comp.lang.python
> existed first, but python-list has been around for long enough that
> the distinction now is really quite academic.

And I should point out that streaming to a newsgroup server at your local 
ISP, is something not often justified as it can quite easily use up the 
bandwidth your local ISP is buying.  Mine is one such as the newsgroups 
in total are often tying up 20+Gb/sec just for that one service.

In contrast, subbing to 50 mailing lists per customer translates to about 
1% of the bandwidth they are provisioned for.

If you were an ISP, how would you handle it? The mailing list version is 
a no brainer.

> I would not be surprised to find that a fair majority of people told
> off on this list for abusing newsgroup etiquette in one way or another
> not only have no idea that this is (also) a newsgroup but don't even
> know what a newsgroup *is*.

This is true. But newsgroups I believe predate a mailing list by perhaps 
6 months. I sat and watched the net come to life, dialing up Delphi at 
300 baud in the beginning, running up an LD bill often north of $100/mo 
because the access number was not a local call.  On a TRS-80 Color 
Computer in those days.

> They may also not know that it's a mailing list, nor what that is,
> because they're coming via Google Groups -- which uses the Usenet
> gateway -- or through gmane -- which comes in through the mailing list
> -- or some other web mirror.

You mentioned GoogleGroups, now go warsh yur mouth out with some of 
Grandma's Lye soap.  This list is 500% easier to read when they are 
filtered out. I still see the responses but they are at least formatted 
for readability.

> TJG

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>