TDPL a bad idea?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Mike Parker" <aldacron at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:hkbc7f$2b8$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>>> I've thought about building such a system for these forums many times.
>>>> Registration would not be required to post, but registering would 
>>>> enable
>>>> features like voting on posts, establishing a profile, preferences, 
>>>> etc.
>>>
>>> That sounds awesome. Another useful feature would be storing session 
>>> info in the profile such that if I read a post at work the post will be 
>>> marked as such when I use a different computer/news-reader like my home 
>>> PC.
>>
>> Yup. What I hate about reddit/slashdot/ycombinator is there's no way to 
>> mark ones I've read as read. On a long thread, it's really hard to see if 
>> there's anything new.
>>
>>
>>> wouldn't it be easier to just use web forums (there are many existing 
>>> system with all the bells and whistles) and write a news-gateway for it 
>>> than to implement all the features for the current news-server? it'll 
>>> also fix the currently broken web interface for the NG.
>>
>> They all suck. Sorry.
>>
>> Most use far too much vertical space, spreading the thread out over 
>> multiple pages, or don't indent a threaded view. And *none* of them have 
>> the ability to mark what you've read.
>
> Most of the web forums I use can be configured per user to determine how 
> many threads to show on one page, or how many posts to show in the thread 
> per page. All of the popular forums these days have features to mark posts 
> as read, mark all read, show posts since last visit, and so on. My 
> particular favorite is SMF[1].
>
> FWIW, this is the only set of newsgroups I read. In fact, I thought I had 
> unsubscribed from my last newsgroup in the late 90s, and was a bit miffed 
> to see that D didn't have a mailing list when I first stumbled across it. 
> All of the other development communities I'm interested in offer mailing 
> lists or web forums. I particularly like mailing lists, since I use GMail. 
> It makes a world of difference. Searching through these newsgroups can be 
> aggravating. If we could get on Google Groups I'd have less to gripe 
> about.
>
> IMO, newsgroups should just die. But I seem to be in the minority here.

About 95% of the time I come across something where the only community 
option is a mailing list, I just flat-out refuse to bother. The few times 
I've caved were when I really, truly *needed* to. I have no problem with 
newsgroups or web forums, they both have their pros and cons IMO. But I 
absolutely can't tolerate mailing lists, they're so absolutely horrid.