Comments on: I hate mailing lists!

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:23:17 +0000

I searched “I hate mailing lists” and this was at the top of the search results. This gets a Google +1 from me.

Mailing lists are ancient technology. In the age of HTML5, there needs to be a better solution. Think stackoverflow. Think http://tenderapp.com/.

There’s an idea in there somewhere.

By: Thad

Thad — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:56:28 +0000

Fuck mailing lists. I too have had to subscribe to these pieces of shit for information pertaining to open source projects. They are a blight upon the open source community.

But there is a flip side to this problem as well. I believe the reason for using a mailing list is simply because it it quite easy to maintain and administer. For smaller projects, mailing lists often have a very low volume and make more sense. Forums have to be updated and admins have to constantly check for security updates to ensure there are no vulnerabilities in the forum software. Also many developers of mature projects are “old school” and are used to and comfortable with the mailing list concept. As the newer generation of developers start large scale projects themselves, we should hopefully see more forums.

So in reality it stems from the fact that project maintainers want to focus on the project and not maintaining the forum. I am not defending them, just giving a reason for all the insanity.

By: mrfusion

mrfusion — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:05:09 +0000

I found your site because I was googling for “I hate mailing lists” and I want to thank you! The worst thing are Pipermail, Mailman and Co, that are the most user-UNfriendly tools I have ever seen.

By: katunk

katunk — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 05:13:16 +0000

I’m trying to learn FreeBSD, and am used to dealing with ArchLinux. Arch has a great forum system, you can find nearly anything there. FreeBSD is supported by the archaic (IMHO) mailing list concept. I have a couple mailing lists I’m on for work, and it’s amazing what time wasters they are. The big thing is that, TODAY, I may not care about lots of things on the list. I will need some of that information NEXT WEEK. So why should I have to deal with it TODAY? The first post here is right on target.

By: canduc17

canduc17 — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:06:41 +0000

You’re absolutely right! Use forums!!!

By: Johnny

Johnny — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 00:30:00 +0000

AMEN. F***ING AMEN.

I just unsubscribed from 12 mailing lists, deleted all the archives, and I’m not looking back. Mailing lists are just a drug for people with boring lives who depend on the inbox counter as a means of self-validation.

It’s kind of like spam, except written by real people.

By: ThatsRight

ThatsRight — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 17:12:43 +0000

I found this website by googling “I hate mailing lists” too.

Hey, they are software developers!! They can find a much better way to communicate than this messy crap.

By: Ole Juul

Ole Juul — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:47:55 +0000

I used to like them years ago when there weren’t any options. It worked well because I was using DOS (I still do) where you set up your own system of dealing with things and it is extremely easy to do that. That answers the first two points, ie:

# You get massive amounts of e-mail that are of no interest to you.
# E-mail clients always mess up threading which leads to discussions often forking into separate threads.

However, most modern OSs don’t have the same facility as DOS. Not only that, but we have since gotten forums and blogs which are simple and direct. That’s way cool. Now I also hate mailing lists. In fact, when I come to one in my web searching I just back right out. It’s just not worth the trouble unless you’re set up for that particular list.

By: E71

E71 — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:59:50 +0000

I’m so glad this site is at the top of “i hate mailing lists” search query.

Surprised it’s not riddled with mailing list advocates though… normally when I have a problem with something about 10 guys pop up from nowhere defending it.

Yeah, um… Mailing lists blow and are a waste of back & forth bandwidth. With more convenient alternatives like forums there’s really no excuse.

By: J-M

J-M — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:54:09 +0000

I just wanted to support the poster by saying I also hate mailing lists. Whats funny is that I also Google “mailing lists suck” like AlphaTwin only to see if I was the only one thinking that it was a retarded way of communicating inside a project! It seems that most of you agree too so let’s make a petition or something to make that illegal :)