Comments on: I hate mailing lists!

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 :)

By: AlphaTwin

AlphaTwin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:59:34 +0000

I agree mailing lists are a pain in the a$$. I Googled “mailing lists suck” and this site came up first. I love open source but the damn mailing lists make me want to slam my temple against the corner of my desk.

By: Hyde

Hyde — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:34:38 +0000

I found this post by searching for ‘mailing lists suck’. And yes, they do by the way. For some reason I cannot subscribe to codehaus. I think their subscription service is hosed.

It’s now 2010 btw, and they are still prevalent and they still suck as much as they did in 2007.

By: Jeckel

Jeckel — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:20:22 +0000

Mailing lists SUCK!!!! Its now almost 2010 and people still use mailing lists. This must have been what it was like after someone invented paper, but people still insisted on craving messages on stone.

I mean really, what is with only showing one post on a page? Do these mailing list people not realize that computer screens can scroll? Maybe if they showed more then one post on a page, every post wouldn’t have to quote one or more of the posts that came before.

Maybe mailing lists were good back in their time (I’ve never seen anything personally that suggests this, but some people claim it), but so were stone tablets, the pony express, and the telegraph… and in the 21st century I think we can let it go in favor of more modern forums.

By: Neil Justice

Neil Justice — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:16:49 +0000

To witness an open source project (or any project) using a mailing list in 2009 is to witness pedagogical lunacy.

Open source projects wonder why they don’t attract new users as much as they would like, and behind poor quality software and documentation, mailing lists are the reason why. Good software with mediocre documentation can be remedied by replacing the mailing list with a forum. With a forum, screenshot-based tutorials written by dedicated users can be sticky-posted to compensate for mediocre documentation (or to augment good documentation). Without having to register first, new and potentially new users can view these tutorials and know they have an entry point into learning the software or API. This grows the user base.

With a mailing list, sticky posts and screenshot-based posts are cumbersome, to say the least. Even if a screenshot-based tutorial manages to get itself posted to a mailing list, few potential new users will see it because many of them will have already been culled at the mailing list registration step. Nobody wants their inbox filled with arcana for an open source project they are only potentially interested in.

The user-generated screenshot-based tutorial is a powerful learning construct, and it’s 2009 (which really must be reiterated), hence the first sentence of this post.

By: Kid Charles

Kid Charles — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:35:51 +0000

I too googled “I hate mailing lists” and arrived here to vent. I’m having trouble with a piece of software and want to get help, but I have to now dick around with a mailing list to do it. I hate mailing lists!

By: Rickard

Rickard — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 23:25:33 +0000

There should be a mailing list for people that share our conviction :)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:29:12 +0000

One more mailing list hater. I heavily prefer forums and wikis to mailinglists.
I too found this page by googling “I hate mailing lists”