[jdev] RE: email is a slum

[Peter Saint-Andre]

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 15:42:09 -0400, Bob Wyman wrote:

> Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>> I'm seriously wondering if we can do mailing
>> lists via pubsub. Email is a slum.
> 	It makes a great deal of sense to process new messages using pubsub,
> however, you really should provide some sort of message archive so that
> people can catch up on potentially very old discussions as well as access
> the conversation if they don't have a Jabber/pubsub client available. I
> strongly suggest that you consider using the Atom syndication format[1,2]
> for building such message archives. 
> 	Mail is terribly overused since it is just about the only commonly
> available mechanism by which content can be "pushed" to some who has
> expressed an interest in receiving updates. My hope is that as PubSub
> becomes more well-known and popular that we'll be able to wean people from
> sending mail and have them use pubsub instead. Ideally, mail would return to
> what it once was: A means for personal communication rather than a general
> content delivery mechanism... In the future, we'll hear people say and
> write: "Don't mail it! Publish it!"...

Hi Bob, 

You're absolutely right about the need for archiving. Some pubsub systems
might keep history, but it may make more sense to use ATOM for archiving
(it sure beats mbox ;-). Unfortunately the ATOM spec is even more fluid
than pubsub, it seems. But it would be good to include an ATOM URL as
metadata for a pubsub node, I think.

(First JDEV message I'm sending via Gmane... ;-)

Peter