h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

two points

1: I think a password protcted bit of DNA is a bad idea because one of the nice things about the current system is that it works when DNA dose not.

2: Whats wrong wiv yahoo groups (I've changed my e-mail address many times wiv no problems, just by following the instructions ... and ... If everybody would use plain text e-mails then the ad's are minimal (its only on styled e-mails that big nasty ad's are attached too)).

I did once suggest the BBC majordomo list srever but Mark poo-pooed the idea at the time

Well, when I've been to the yahoo groups page and looked through postings I've done in plain text they have always had an ad on them and when I'm searching through the posts, every so often I'm dragged away to another poxy ad.

I do think we should use a less ad overloaded service. I just don't know where to find one.

Researcher PSG

To reply to GreyDesk's 'No free lunch' posting:

Use one of the spare BBCi servers, load up mailing list software (Majordomo is a good example). Easy and flexible, with access to the source code and easy maintaince. Plus, full access to the database. And, if you run it off Linux, it's all free. So there is, GD, such a thing as a free lunch .

In reply to 'Researcher PSG [Minister of Impossibility and Improbability] - Peace!' - I was talking about the e-mail service.

and in reply to 'Robert Wall (Axe)' - the BBC already has a Majordomo service in place.

Then why are we even discussing this? Majordomo is *the* way to control a mailing list (IMHO)!

Sorry, majordomo is a no-go. I know it's used elsewhere, but it's not something the Beeb wants to promote.

Personally, I like the idea of something based on DNA, because we don't have to pay anyone, it's a good communication technology, people are familiar with it, and migrating the user details would be relatively simple. But I can't tell you whether it's feasible, as Jim's in hospital and it's his call... but would a DNA-based site be a good solution for the majority? Or do people want email-based communication?

So, we're looking for: a secure, private messaging system, for free, with no ads. I'm not going to ask what the Beeb has against Majordomo, so don't answer me.

The problem with using DNA is that, as noted before, it'd have to be completly separate from the other DNA sites, with no integration whatsoever, at least until the Conversations and Search functions are changed.

Being completly honest, I could live with web-based mail. It'd stop me from reading the mailing list as often, but it wouldn't overly inconvenience me. As pointed out, h2g2 is web-based and therefore all volunteers need to use the WWW once in a while anyway.

Finally, whatever you do, host the thing on site. As I said above, it stops ads and contract changes, allows direct database access and makes maintainence easier.

I'd prefer an e-mail based system.

I just mentioned this to a friend & they said it might be worth checking out http://www.instantalk.com/

A DNA solution would probably be the best move, though I'd miss the e-mail side of it...

Who knows, the ability to request regular e-mail digests of new posts on specific threads could be a valuable addition to DNA as a whole...

I dissagrea - if there was no e-mail I would miss most of wots going on & thus have to give serious condieration to my volunteer status.

The Instantalk homepage offers exactly what we're looking for, though I haven't seen anything about no-ads. Of what's been said so far, I'd probably go with this!

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Mailing_Lists/Hosting_Companies/

Re: Instantalk
I read through the faq and ... No calander & each e-mail contains a three line ad.

Free, is the stumbling-bock here. You can do all of this - including offline email & calendering - using IBM's Domino with iNotes, but the server license plus site license for unlimited users would be about 6k.

It would also take - oh - about a day to set up, and it would then work reliably for ever, which in a world with Microsoft in it cannot possibly be tolerated

i'd definitely prefer something i can get by e-mail, not just web-based...i hardly ever visit any of my yahoo groups, i rely on e-mail...
^. .^
= ' =

The Post is currently dumping Yahoo Groups for it's own new, specially coded system.

We have forums based on the dna structure, ut we have clickable smilies.

We have email. Not only a way of sending out digests of the current conversations, but also an internal email system that gives each regular writer a @h2g2post.co.uk email address to show off with.

We have a new automated contribution system based on pop3emails.

We have seperate homepages to share photos/files on.

In short, it's got a lot of the functionality of h2g2 that we'd need if/when the beeb servers grind or go down, but not so much that we'd migrate there, and it has the privacy aspect in that only registered users can access it. It does have a couple of public pages though.

We even have a wider choice of skins

The cost of all this wonderfulness?
Squat.
A chap I know invested/setup the domain name (just under £40 for two years) and I wrote the code.

Look at it this way, we're a community based on science fiction, there are a lot of progammers out there. Why we can't write our own replacement, get a cheap host (or stick it on the beeb servers) and sort it out how we'd like?

You can even have the code for the new Post Office site if you want to make it easy, slap on a new skin and you're away. You could probably even have it up and running by the end of the month.
By the end of the month the Post won't be using Yahoo anymore.

Pastey

GNU Mailman is, I believe, superior to majordomo in some ways - however, neither offer anything other than e-mail - no file storage, calendars etc. etc. (not that we seem to use them at all).

MSN Communities is awful. It only works reliably in Internet Explorer, and has never let me post anything when using Linux, so it's clearly not an option. In an ideal world, any alternative would be hosted by the BBC. I would very much like to see a DNA-based solution to this, but I think it would need new features implementing and there's already a long list...

Sorry, I have no other suggestions - when needing a decent site to roleplay on, I decided to write one. Unfortunately it's not finished yet