On Jun 1, 2007, at 10:15 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
The POV-Ray community model is another great example of how this type of
thing can (and should) work - they've got a web interface to an NNTP
server; they've got binaries groups where inline image posting is
permitted (though it's not a hard enforcement in other groups - I'm not
sure why people think NNTP can't handle inline images, it certainly
can). news.povray.org is usable both with a news reader as well as the
web interface - those who might benefit from seeing how someone else has
set this up might wander over and have a look.
I'm definitely a strong supporter of this, and second the idea of POV-Ray as a good example.
In fact once you remove the multi-server distribution (as POV-Ray does, since their groups are private), it does boil down to being about the technical equivalent of a mailing list. The limitations people see, I believe, arise from shortcomings in the mail software they use. I happen to get a very nice, threaded view of the inkscape mailing lists, in-line images and all, since I'm using a decent client (Apple's mail app), but for those others a pass through NNTP and a front-end like POV-Ray has could be very useful.
*But* I think the main goal is to not fragment the different discussion groups. If some people participate in a given discussion via mail, and some via NNTP and some via a web front-end, but all are discussing things together then we gain the most. It is in artificially splitting a discussion just to allow for different access methods that we would end up losing.