Python Forum

[geremy condra]

You've heard of a little fly-by-night outfit called AT&T?

They were my ISP as of three weeks ago. Has something changed
since then?

Geremy Condra

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

So? NNTP is the living dead. Time to let it go.

So you say. I think the millions of posts on Usenet say different.

According to Wikipedia, the average number of all text posts in the Big-8
newsgroups is 1,800 new messages every hour. That excludes binary groups,
where the amount of traffic is much, much bigger.

Sure, a lot of those 1,800 posts are spam, but the spammers wouldn't
waste their time if they didn't think there were people still on Usenet.

Most people use this list via e-mail,

How do you know? Do you have evidence for this, or are you just making it
up?

In a later post, you claimed the evidence is:

"Scan through a bunch of threads with show-headers. Watch the User-Agent
value (set by the senders client). The results become obvious pretty
quickly."

Or in other words, a non-random selection of posts followed by an error-
prone and subjective test.

I've picked seven posts from this thread, from seven different users, and
I get these User Agents:

User-Agent Count Mail or News?
none 1 unknown
Mozilla/5.0 1 Both
Gnus/5.13 2 Both
G2/1.0 2 Web (interface to News)
Thunderbird 1 Both

I happen to know at least one of the Gnus users is using News, so that's
1 definite News, 2 Web, 4 either News or email, and no definite email.

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

You've heard of a little fly-by-night outfit called AT&T?

Yes I have. Aren't they the people who were engaged in a long-running
criminal conspiracy to break the law and commit illegal warrantless
surveillance of American citizens?

If you look at the reviews here:

http://www.dslreports.com/gbu/

they are a distinct second-class ISP, with average B scores. Perhaps
that's better than "rubbish", but it's nothing to be proud about when you
are a company the size of AT&T. When you have that many resources,
anything less than straight A+ is a failure.

And that's not even mentioning their lack of News access, their ham-
fisted and clueless blocking of 4chan (whether in legitimate self-defence
or not), or their stance on net neutrality.

But the really sad thing is that you think that "bigger" automatically
equals "better".

 

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

Sure, a lot of those 1,800 posts are spam, but the spammers wouldn't
waste their time if they didn't think there were people still on Usenet.

Kidding, right? Cost to spam is virtually zero so the ROI is pretty
close to infinite no matter how many people they reach.

 

[John Nagle]

Really? I can't think of any 2.0 era social networks using pleasant
interfaces. All the ones I've seen or used start with mediocre interfaces
and get worse from there.



Thank goodness for that!



If somebody can't distinguish code from comments in a post by the
context, they aren't cut out to be a programmer and should probably stick
to posting "OMG LOL" on a social networking site.


Pasting or typing a URL is unintuitive?

If somebody can't take the time and effort to post a URL in a form that
is not broken, well, that doesn't say much for their skills as a coder
does it? If you can't handle the fact that URLs can't be broken over
multiple lines in email and news posts, how do you expect to handle even
more vigorous requirements while programming?



I get:

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://pythonforum.org/
The following error was encountered:
Connection to 173.83.46.254 Failed
The system returned:
(111) Connection refused


Oops. Looks like they can't handle the millions of new users joining up.

Despite my sarcasm, I actually do wish them the best.

I'm not thrilled about having to deal with yet another forum system

This one is at best mediocre. It took 14 seconds to deliver its
home page. It wants me to "register". Which probably means I'll be
spammed. Forum Software Review gives "Informer Technologies" a 2
out of 5 on their system.

I know USENET is obsolete, but the alternatives are worse.

If we're going to have a forum system, it probably should be
on "Python.org", which already has mailing lists, a wiki, an IRC server,
and a way to order T-shirts.

John Nagle

 

[Adam Tauno Williams]

Ah, so you feel up to my "xsl for xmlrunner.py" question?

I do a fair amount of xslt, but I don't have any idea what xmlrunner.py
is. It isn't a GED-level question if it involves specific knowledge
about a tertiary product/project.

 

[Pierre Quentel]

Really? I can't think of any 2.0 era social networks using pleasant
interfaces. All the ones I've seen or used start with mediocre interfaces
and get worse from there.


Thank goodness for that!


If somebody can't distinguish code from comments in a post by the
context, they aren't cut out to be a programmer and should probably stick
to posting "OMG LOL" on a social networking site.

They certainly *can* distinguish. But it's so easy to make it more
explicit with syntax highlighting, background color, border etc. that
most sites about programing languages use it, including the Python
home site itself, or the Python cookbook on Active State

Pasting or typing a URL is unintuitive?

If somebody can't take the time and effort to post a URL in a form that
is not broken, well, that doesn't say much for their skills as a coder
does it? If you can't handle the fact that URLs can't be broken over
multiple lines in email and news posts, how do you expect to handle even
more vigorous requirements while programming?

That's 2 different things. When you use a programming language you
know you have to adopt the syntax defined by the program. When you
write something in a forum, you expect that the editor will be smart
enough to know that http://pythonforum.org is a URL

 

[Jim Byrnes]

Yes I have. Aren't they the people who were engaged in a long-running
criminal conspiracy to break the law and commit illegal warrantless
surveillance of American citizens?

If you look at the reviews here:

http://www.dslreports.com/gbu/

they are a distinct second-class ISP, with average B scores. Perhaps
that's better than "rubbish", but it's nothing to be proud about when you
are a company the size of AT&T. When you have that many resources,
anything less than straight A+ is a failure.

And that's not even mentioning their lack of News access, their ham-
fisted and clueless blocking of 4chan (whether in legitimate self-defence
or not), or their stance on net neutrality.

But the really sad thing is that you think that "bigger" automatically
equals "better".

I thought his point was they are big enough to have the resources to
offer newsgroups but don't. If I want fast internet I must use Comcast
and Comcast doesn't offer newsgroups either. Sadly is seems getting
access to newsgroups is getting harder and harder. I much prefer
newsgroups or email lists to web forums.

Regards, Jim

 

[Michael Torrie]

The best solution I've seen is what is used by the Mono project;
which provides both a "web forum" and a mail list interface.

<http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list>
<http://go-mono.com/forums/>

I just checked the archives of mono-list vs the forum and it's apparent
that this scheme suffers from the same problem as every other forum
solution.

The threaded flow of discussion is lost, replaced by a flat,
chronological "conversation." Even though the list archive suggests
there is still a tree structure to posts, when you check into it you
find that it is not a tree at all. Every message to the forum is taken
to be a reply to the one before, even though it might not be. The
archive web interface simply abandons nesting at 4 levels or so.

 

[Emile van Sebille]

Most people use this list via e-mail,

How do you know? Do you have evidence for this, or are you just making it
up?
[/QUOTE]

Is there now a non-email method of posting to this list?

Emile

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Is there now a non-email method of posting to this list?

Well... I've never used an email method... Used to use
comp.lang.python via Earthlink's subcontracted news server -- but my
flaky DSL encountered a 4 month period when I could only transfer
messages using dial-up (I need to contact them for a replacement DSL
modem as my store-bought replacement still can't download email [logs
show I connect to server, handshake, and even get the list of how many
new messages there are -- but the link freezes as soon as it does a
retrieve of the first message... I've been doing a daily 28.8K dial-up
to download email]).

During that period of "no contact" I added gmane as an NNTP
server...

 

[John Bokma]

But the really sad thing is that you think that "bigger" automatically
equals "better".

I don't think that was the point.

Anyway, not everbody can pick a provider, there are plenty of places
that have only one or maybe two. And if that's the choice and neither
carries Usenet you have to pay for Usenet like I do. Note that I
consider it well worth the 10 euros I pay for it.

To me, it looks like the use of Usenet for text is on the
decline. I've been away from Usenet for like a year or so and could see
quite a difference. More and more ISPs in my experience are dropping
Usenet from their services. Mind, I think that the number of users on
Usenet (text only) still exceeds the number when I first used Usenet
(back in the early 90's). But usage is on the decline as far as I can
tell. On top of that I see people I know from Usenet now quite active on
Stack Overflow and sister sites.

Finally, I have to disagree with your disagreement (which is just a
personal experience) based on my personal experience: it's harder to
find an ISP that carries Usenet. And I have experience with, oh, just 3
countries where I have been living in for the past 10 years.

 

[Andreas Waldenburger]

This already *is* a forum. Whatever it is you think is needed, it's
already a forum. Can you be more specific about what you would add?

I meant a web forum.

/W

 

[Terry Reedy]

Is there now a non-email method of posting to this list?

Google <==> comp.lang.python <==> python-list <==> gmane.comp.python.general

where <==> is a bi-directional gateway.

Gmane mirrors about 250 other Python mailing lists under
gman.comp.python.xxx. I currently subscibe to 3 others.

gmane does this because many people like to
1) look at a group first without subscribing (in the mail list sense, as
opposed to the newgroup sense of click a box)
2) keep messages for each group separated (without having to add folders
and filters to their email reader)
3) only download messages they want to read

Terry Jan Reedy

 

[Alf P. Steinbach]

* Andreas Waldenburger, on 04.06.2010 20:21:

I meant a web forum.

You can access [comp.lang.python] via Google Groups and other web based interfaces.

So it already is a web forum.


Cheers & hth.,

- Alf

 

[Andreas Waldenburger]

How do you know? Do you have evidence for this, or are you just
making it up?

Is there now a non-email method of posting to this list?
[/QUOTE]
Te-he. Yes.

In case you're not being ironic:
<http://www.python.org/community/lists/>

/W

 

[John Bokma]

They certainly *can* distinguish. But it's so easy to make it more
explicit with syntax highlighting, background color, border etc. that
most sites about programing languages use it, including the Python
home site itself, or the Python cookbook on Active State
[..]

That's 2 different things. When you use a programming language you
know you have to adopt the syntax defined by the program. When you
write something in a forum, you expect that the editor will be smart
enough to know that http://pythonforum.org is a URL

You're using a bad Usenet client. Switch to Gnus, part of Emacs, for
example and you can have both.

 

[John Bokma]

Sure, a lot of those 1,800 posts are spam, but the spammers wouldn't
waste their time if they didn't think there were people still on
Usenet.

Heh, since spamming goes automatically who cares how many people it
reaches. I also see spam in which people forget to include a URL,
etc. My site is daily hit by badly written spam software.

So, no: spam is not by far any way to measure the number of readers. On
top of that, there is /no way/ to even determine how many people read a
given Usenet group.

How do you know? Do you have evidence for this, or are you just making it
up?

I guess the same way as your remark regarding spam: guessing (I guess) ;-)

I happen to know at least one of the Gnus users is using News, so that's
1 definite News, 2 Web, 4 either News or email, and no definite email.

Fwiw: I use Usenet .

 

[John Bokma]

How do you know? Do you have evidence for this, or are you just making it
up?

Is there now a non-email method of posting to this list?[/QUOTE]

No idea what "this list" is, but I am reading your message in Gnus via Usenet.

 

[Andreas Waldenburger]

* Andreas Waldenburger, on 04.06.2010 20:21:

I meant a web forum.

You can access [comp.lang.python] via Google Groups and other web
based interfaces.

So it already is a web forum.

Huh. I've never looked at it that way.

OK, then. Forget what I said about Wave. Oh, you have? Good.


/W