Looking for MLM with web-based interface for users.

[Scott Garman]

Hi Ben, thanks for the response...

On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 20:53, bscott at ntisys.com wrote:
> On 16 Feb 2003, at 4:45pm, sgarman at einstein.unh.edu wrote:
> > As the discussion list has grown, the volume of mail has reached a point
> > where many users want to stay involved in some discussions but not
> > others ...
> 
>   I believe they are looking for a feature of mail/news software called
> "threading", which keeps track of threads-of-conversation.

Indeed. But then of course they would have to understand the netiquette
of changing subject lines when the topic of a thread of discussion
changes, which very few people actually do. Even I'm not religious
enough about this, I admit. 

> 
> > They are not technically trained enough to figure out mail filtering
> > software or otherwise deal with the problem on their end.
> 
>   That strikes me as a rather bad attitude.  They want their own experience
> to be improved, but refuse to invest anything in that improvement?  That
> does not bode well.

Well, in this case they see a solution that offers what they want -
YahooGroups. The problem is, not everyone wants it.

> 
> > What they want is to be able to fully interact with the list via a web
> > interface, including posting replies.
> 
>   Bruce Dawson has/had something like that setup for GNHLUG at
> <http://news.gnhlug.org/>, which is based on PHP-Nuke.
> 
>   A word of warning: Be sure anything you setup gates appropriately in both
> directions.  Put more bluntly, do not placate the web-weenies at the expense
> of email-die-hards (unless you are sure the latter are an insignificant
> minority).

No, I certainly need to placate both groups. 

The PHP-Nuke setup you refer to above is pretty interesting. I've run a
Slash-based site for a couple of years now, and I always liked the looks
and features of PHP-Nuke. However, the vulnerabilities posted on Bugtraq
on it practically every week or two (usually cross site scripting
issues) have me kind of nervous. I'm not sure if this solution would be
very intuitive to most of the users, either. But I won't rule it out
just yet. 

Thanks,

Scott

-- 
Scott A. Garman                            Unix System Administrator
sgarman at einstein.unh.edu                   UNH Nuclear Physics Group