Re: How to subsribe to a general mailing list?

[Emanuel Berg]

Adam Sjøgren wrote:

>> I hesitate to do this because I don't want to store the
>> mailing list in my mail inbox.
>
> What people usually do is to "split" (filter) email for
> a mailing list into a separate "group" (folder).

But that is a poor-man's solution, it will have to be setup
manually, and retrieval will be non-selective. Gnus can do
much better than than with Gmane which is the specific tool to
solve this exact situation; also, it comes with a bunch of
other advantages.

Remember, Gnus is to Emacs users what Emacs is to computer
users ...

>> If I subscribe to the list, then the only way (that I know)
>> to remove the mails from my mail inbox is to delete them.
>> But, what if I want to read the unsubscribed mailing list
>> again in the future? Re-subscribing to the list won't send
>> me the old mails again. So I need some way to read the
>> entire mailing list.
>
> That's the situation where Gmane is handy - as it is keeps
> being subscribed to a mailing list regardless of whether you
> - or anybody else - is reading it, so it has all the emails
> back to when the group was created in Gmane.

It is much better, not the least/especially in terms of
the interface.

>> I mean I do not have the ability to freely manipulate the
>> contents on the server. For example, I have to request to
>> add some mailing lists to the server. How am I in control
>> of that? What if I want to subscribe to some mailing list
>> that I don't wish others to know that I want to
>> subscribe to?
>
> Ah yes, in those cases using a public service is out of
> the question.

You mean the admin of Gmane?

Because everyone else don't know. Or if they do, please tell
me what 16 MLs/newsgroups and 1 blog I currently subscribe to
thru Gmane/Gwene and the news.gmane.io server?

But this objection is silly to begin with ...

>> Moreover, if I later don't want to subscribe to the mailing
>> list, could I remove the list from the gmane server?
>
> No - you can unsubscribe (and forget about the group), but
> somebody else might be reading the mailing list via Gmane -
> if you could remove it, you'd annoy anybody else who
> subscribed to the group in the meantime.

Right - on the contrary, with Gnus and Gmane, killing or
unsubscribing to a group is one keystroke away. But better
yet, it isn't needed even since if you don't visit the groups,
nothing happens. This is what I mentioned above, altho from
the other side of it, with Gmane, retrieval is selective.

>> why can users add arbitrary mailing lists to the server?
>
> To me it feels very much like a "I would like to use this
> myself, so I built it. Maybe others would like to use it as
> well, feel free to do so"-project. Although I don't know
> what Lars' motivations were/are.

It is to simplify/speed up the process. Either people don't
abuse it, or if they do to some very small extent, there are
automatic or manual checks to correct it. It is a tool for
Emacs Gnus users. Compare "there are [were?] no viruses for
Linux".

>> I think the server only has a limited amout of spaces, so
>> that the user can only add a limited amount of mailing
>> lists to the server?
>
> There are only a limited amount of mailing lists on
> the internet.
>
> And the emails on those lists are (mainly) written by
> people. People can only type so much.
>
> Plus: have you looked at the sizes of harddisks these days?
> You can store a _lot_ of emails in a couple of terabytes.

Ha! Dear OP, just try it before you make up objections.
To quote the barrel racer, just try - and you will fly!

>> Or does gmane know some alchemical magic to handle an
>> unlimited amount of subscriptions to mailing lists?
>
> Luckily there aren't an unlimited supply of mailing lists,
> and there aren't an unlimited number of mailing lists that
> people are interested in reading through Gmane.
>
> So although resources aren't unlimited, neither is the need
> for capacity.
>
> I would guess that storage was much more a problem in the
> beginning of Gmane (20 years ago!) than now :-)
>
> This discussion has become only tangentially Gnus related,
> it might make sense to switch to the gmane.discuss group on
> news.gmane.io? :-)

The problem isn't your answers but the OP - or should I call
him the PO? - 's inside-out attitude. Trust us, if you are
a Gnus user, Gmane is what you are looking for. It is there
especially for your use-case. Just do us all a favor and try
it instead of making up made-up objections.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal