02
05/07
5:55 pm
Blogs to replace Mailing Lists
I’ve been trying to setup a mailing list for Comma Induced and for anyone who wants to keep up-to-date on the development. Unfortunately, they just doesn’t do it for me. I mean, seriously, receiving hundreds of EMAILS every day in order to stay on top of discussions? Common! That’s sooooo 80’s.
Suddenly, I had an epiphany! Why not use BLOGS instead of Mailing Lists?
The idea
Essentially, blogs and mailing lists serve the same function: discussions. Knowing that, I figure it would be a piece of cake to setup a blog for users and developers to communicate on specific projects.
I’ve searched everywhere for an application that would allow me to do this, but I couldn’t find one.
The problem is that blog software is not currently designed to allow ‘anyone’ to ‘post’, ‘anytime’. I have yet to see a blog spam filter for an actual post, as opposed to a comment (thanks Akismet) ;)
The application would have to function similarly to Digg or del.icio.us, minus the “ranking” to stay on top. Some kind of community moderation would help to keep the junk out, and provide redundant requests with proper guidance. Chronological order would be best, but sorting things by tags would make it even better.
Extra
The added bonus is that anyone can keep track of the discussions thanks to RSS.
I’m pretty sure i’m not the only one to have thought of this, and if that’s the case, why isn’t anyone doing it?
Carl
May 2, 2007
6:42 pm
This isn’t a feature of blogs, but it is a feature of forums. Anyone can post as long as they are a member of the community. Google Groups is a great mailing list manager if you don’t want to setup your own.
Alex
May 2, 2007
10:07 pm
I’ve tried Google Groups… doesn’t suit my needs. I don’t like the idea that I can’t use my own custom domain for the mailing lists. It forces you to use @googlegroups.com.
As for the forums, I actually didn’t think of that. I think what i’m looking for is an amalgam between forums and blogs.
Ilija Studen
May 3, 2007
4:30 am
Like Carl said, forum is what you need. You can get a light weight forum (Vanilla or PunBB for instance) and change its look and feel to fit your needs.
Alex
May 3, 2007
7:54 am
Thanks Ilija for your comment. I’m going to look into that.
Carl
May 4, 2007
5:09 pm
Someone reminded me today that Mephisto (a Rails based blog framework) allows multiple users. The bonus is that it allows you to have users that have the ability to create entries but do not have access to the admin features. The Mephisto site is currently unavailable because of the Registerfly debacle but you can get the source here:
http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/mephisto/trunk/