It would be a nice thing, and it's something I've been looking at for over 10 years. Unfortunately, it's practically impossible. Yes, you can have mailinglists which have html archives where you could post stuff, and you could have forums with email integration. But due to the very different nature of the technologies, it's not going to work. The users of either system is going to be fed up with users of the other. Email does support message id:s and all sorts of stuff, but you can never be sure that the clients do. So even if all users of a list will see an answer and will know what it is an answer to, it could very easily be impossible for the forum software to know where to place it. And when you start to add list digests and people answering several emails at once. All hell breaks loose. I used to be a mailing list buff, but have gone over completely to forums. With proper subscription models, it can be almost as good. And you get a lot of other nice possibilities as well. Nowadays I can't even reply properly to emails, as you can see. /Olle Johansson Stephen Leacock - "I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/stephen_leacock.html On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 21:57, David Artman <david.artman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Craig Forbes <cpforbes@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> > I use Simple Machine Forum on http://glasscutter.org/forums and it >> > allows >> > for notification of new topics and of replies to topics in which you >> > reply. >> > So you can: >> > * get a notification for each new topic, on any and all board(s) (i.e. >> > sub-forums) you choose, and >> > * automatically or electively be notified of replies to topics in which >> > you >> > post. >> So after I get a message about a new topic I have to reply to it (or >> presumably opt in without replying) to get further notifications? > > If I understand you: Yes, you can click Notify on any message. Or you can > set preferences in your profile to automatically notify you of replies to > any topic in which you post. To actually reply, you'd have to click the link > in the mail to go to the forum itself. > >> Can you request to be emailed every message in certain board (to be >> more mailing list like)? > > Yep. There's a Notify button for every board. (It doesn't notify you when > you post, as you might expect.) > >> >> Do the email notifications do the right thing with the In-Reply-To >> header so threading mail readers can do the right thing? > > Um. Dunno. Haven't used it THAT much. I suppose it would, if only via the > Subject field...? > > It seems mostly for keeping you in the loop when things are added without > actually having to check the forum site daily. > >> >> I think good 2-way email integration is a requirement for replacing a >> mailing list with a forum. > > OK, that could be pretty rare. Creating a new topic with an email would > be... tough to manage, I think--for instance, most email clients don't have > a field to indicate what board a message should be posted to; so I reckon > each board would have to have its own "email address." An emailed reply > going into the right topic *should* be programmable, so long as the sender > doesn't change the subject line. And note that many forum tools allow a > different subject line for a post within a topic, so post-via-email would > actually have to be supported by the email client (with a "Topic" field or > some-such, independent of the Subject field). > > I reckon I haven't seen an actual two-way-email-capable forum, yet. > >> >> Have you (or anyone) used Nabble much? I personally prefer mailing >> lists so I haven't attempted to use Nabble as the primary interface to >> any mailing lists. > > There's an Icehouse List Nabble. Google Groups also allows "listserv > echoing," and one could reply back at the Group so long as the group email > is on the listserv member list. > > In the end, forums and listservs are two different beast, with pros and cons > to each of them. I'm not really all het-up about forums anymore: I used to > want to do as much with forums as possible, to be machine-independent (i.e. > access everything I do online from any computer or browser); but now I > mostly use web mail, too, so it's a push either way on that front. Again, if > Mailman could cull HUGE auto-replies (top-posting) or allowed HTML/RTF mail, > I'd see no meaningful difference beyond a few minor convenience features > (and stuff like Karma or Rankings, which we've little need for in our > small-ish community). > > _______________________________________________ > Geeks mailing list > Geeks@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.looneylabs.com/mailman/listinfo/geeks > >