[PATCH] README: add info about mailing list subscription

[Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>]

"Lin Jen-Shin (godfat)" <godfat@godfat.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 10:54 PM, Eric Wong <e@80x24.org> wrote:
> > mlmmj uses plus-addressing: kcar-public+subscribe@bogomips.org
> 
> Ohh, sorry about that. I spent a few seconds and cannot find
> how to subscribe it so I decided to just try it. Mentioning this
> in the README would be nice. (or I guess you might want to
> reduce the subscribers therefore not mentioning it? :P)

Yeah, I didn't really want it; but I suppose it's better
than "subscribe" messages coming to the list.  Patch below.

> > Also, I'm considering writing something which downloads NNTP
> > messages(*) and uploads to IMAP servers to reduce SMTP
> > subscribers on my mailing lists; similar to how the feed2imap
> > RubyGem works for RSS/Atom feeds.
> >
> >
> > Would you consider using that? (or writing something like that
> > yourself? :)
> 
> Sorry that I don't really understand how this works. For myself,
> as long as there's an easy way to subscribe to the mailing list,
> whatever should work for me.

I guess another question is: do you use IMAP to read mail
or webmail (or something else, POP3)?

With nntp2imap, it might be something like:

==> ~/.nntp2imap/rc.yml <=
---
groups:
  - name: kcar
    source: nntp://news.public-inbox.org/inbox.comp.lang.ruby.kcar
    destination: imaps://username@yourserver.example.com/INBOX.kcar
  ...

That way, I would have no information about who reads the list
(especially if you use something like Tor to anonymize yourself)

Another option might be Atom feeds; but Message-ID headers
tend to get lost when people want to reply...

For a sysadmin, the beauty of NNTP is there's no per-client
state stored on the server itself.  It's all in the client.
Same for Atom feeds.

I might also work on a POP3 server; but that also means
my server still needs to track (anonymous) accounts to
avoid delivering duplicate messages; so it's about the
same storage overhead as SMTP delivery.  The nice thing
about POP3 (AFAIK) is all the major webmail providers
provide a POP3 import support.  I don't know of any which
provide NNTP import support.

And of course, 3rd parties may also run the POP3 server
as a service to gateway any NNTP server.

> I really hope I would have time to work on making plaintext
> world more accessible and convenient to use. Unfortunately
> the rich world is moving too fast and it's hard to catch up
> with merely some free time... So I would try to follow up,
> but probably can't spend too much time writing it unless
> fortunately it's aligning to my day-to-day works.

No worries.

--------8<---------
Subject: [PATCH] README: add info about mailing list subscription

But of course, add a disclaimers :>
---
 README | 12 ++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/README b/README
index c735a76..b1a577d 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -86,6 +86,14 @@ All feedback (bug reports, user/development discussion, patches, pull
 requests) go to the public mailing list: mailto:kcar-public@bogomips.org
 All mail is archived publically at: https://bogomips.org/kcar-public/
 and nntp://news.public-inbox.org/inbox.comp.lang.ruby.kcar
-Anonymous requests will always be welcome.
-No subscription is necessary to post to the mailing list.
+
+Anonymous posts will always be welcome.
+
+No subscription is necessary to post to the mailing list;
+but you may subscribe by sending a plain-text mail to:
+
+	mailto:kcar-public+subscribe@bogomips.org
+
+Keep in mind we suck at delivering email, so using NNTP or
+Atom feeds might be a better bet.
 Please remember to Cc: all recipients as subscription is optional.
-- 
EW