Participating in a mailing list

I have always been confused by mailing lists. It's just a jumble of message in my mailbox. I tried to use Mozilla's Seamonkey to subscribe to a mailing list, but it is not working and/or I have no idea what I'm doing.

I want to subscribe to this mailing list: http://fluorine.thesilentgroup.com/mailman/listinfo

I have already followed the instructions to subscribe with my yahoo.com email account, but I would like to view the messages and participate in the group through seamonkey, or any other application you can recommend. I already have two other newsgroups I'm subscribed to, and it's just a chaotic mess of emails in my inbox. There has to be a better (threaded) way of viewing and replying to these messages. It would seem that they could be grouped together by subject. I suppose I could create a new gmail account and see if they look better in that context.

AaronLS

Posted 2009-09-01T04:29:22.980

Reputation: 2 074

Answers

NNTP is the Usenet protocol, your email list does not use it. But you have some options.

Emacs Gnus is a Usenet news reader that can sort mail into groups, and then thread them like newsgroups.

Gmane serves mailing lists through NNTP. You can check to see if your list is included, or ask it to be included if it is not.

Richard Hoskins

Posted 2009-09-01T04:29:22.980

Reputation: 10 260

You need to look at what options there are in SeaMonkey for ordering the material in your inbox. I use Thunderbird rather than SeaMonkey; there are options to view things in date order, or in thread order, or various other orders. That is definitely the case for (NetNews) news groups, but I think similar options are available in the mail. You can also filter the various different mailing lists into separate folders, and then view the folders as you wish.

I expect similar options apply in SeaMonkey too.

Jonathan Leffler

Posted 2009-09-01T04:29:22.980

Reputation: 4 526

I can't even get connected to the group. It ask me for the Newsgroup Server (NNTP), and I've tried fluorine.thesilentgroup.com as well as thesilentgroup.com, but neither connects. I'm not sure if my other settings are not right, or if the server is not actually a NNTP server. – AaronLS – 2009-09-01T04:50:40.847

Most mailing lists are run by, surprise, mail servers - not by NNTP servers. Often there is a mailing list manager package running it. Often, you will find instructions on the mailing list management in X-* headers in the messages sent to the mailing list. Failing that, the web site associated with the mailing list may have information on how to subscribe somewhere on it. – Jonathan Leffler – 2009-09-01T22:37:05.747

Use a gmail account - threaded emails are perfect for mailing lists. And, use labels to group messages from each list. Works a treat.

Antony

Posted 2009-09-01T04:29:22.980

Reputation: 706

Except Gmail automatically deletes automated responses to mail you send to the list. This seems to include some subscription confirmation challenges (e.g. those sent by Mailman software) so you can't reply and thus can't subscribe. – e100 – 2010-07-23T15:16:02.717

I have a gmail account and am a member of a few programming lists. I find that gmail does a very good job of tracking threads in mailing lists etc – tgbarnett – 2009-09-28T02:38:01.163

Subscribe to the list on this page: http://fluorine.thesilentgroup.com/mailman/listinfo/… Now email from the list will be sent to your email account. Configure Seamonkey or another mail client to filter the messages to a specific folder (if desired) and view by thread to read threaded discussions.

CarlF

Posted 2009-09-01T04:29:22.980

Reputation: 8 576

When you say "I would like to view the messages in..." I presume that you mean new messages. One of the weaknesses of mailing lists is that you can't go back to the start of a question as easily as you can with a forum.

Given that... Thunderbird (and presumably also SeaMonkey) lets you view your email by threads, which is a good way of keeping track of emails in a conversation.

Is there any other specific information that you can give us about the difficulty that you are having?

tgbarnett

Posted 2009-09-01T04:29:22.980

Reputation: 896

-2

I know this does not directly answer your question, but one option is to encourage groups that use mailing lists to move to a forum/bulletin board format.

Travis Northcutt

Posted 2009-09-01T04:29:22.980

Reputation: 901

An explanation for downvotes would be nice... I know my answer is not directly related, but I qualified it as such. – Travis Northcutt – 2009-09-01T11:39:36.107

I am not the downvoter, but: you answered a question the original person didn't ask (as you said), and many Internet old-timers like me hate the idea of switching from something efficient like a mailing list to something unwieldy and stupid like a forum. Note: the use of "stupid" is meant as self-deprecating humor. – CarlF – 2009-09-28T02:29:05.437