NNTP instead of mail

[Jules Richardson]

On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 16:27 +0000, Chris Blackburn wrote:
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> Hi all,
> 
> I know that this one has probably been covered countless times before 
> and has been shot down

Actually, I don't think I've seen it - mind you I missed the period of
time when the list was split, so maybe it got talked about then.

> We could set up a private news server using INN.

How well do most newsreaders cope with multiple servers though? That'd
be my main gripe, having to select different servers depending on what I
wanted to read / pull down to local disk for archival. 

I have no idea how load on an NNTP server compares to load on an SMTP
server. It's maybe more spread out with NNTP?

Interesting question though - I can't really think of any downsides
other than:

1) Multiple server issues mentioned above

2) The mailing list works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it etc. - given
the amount of time / money / resources that Jay's put into the list, I
expect there'd have to be a big incentive to change. I'm not sure what
NNTP would give you over and above what the mailing list already does?

3) Some people don't have NNTP access. Seriously. I've seen braindead
companies who don't consider usenet to be a good resource and block the
port at the firewall (despite usenet being IME a quicker way of getting
a resolution to a specific problem than the web)

cheers

J.