Re: Reading Ruby-Talk in Atom or RSS

On Apr 17, 2010, at 6:17 AM, J=F6rg W Mittag wrote:
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> steve ross wrote:
>> The recent "moderation" thread raised several questions in my mind. =
I'm interested in what others are doing about this:
>>=20
>> 1. Is there a decent threaded RSS or Atom reader on OSX? One not =
inside an email client?
>> 2. Is there a way to subscribe to ruby-talk but not receive email? =
AFICT, it's email and either on or off.
>> 3. Is there an RSS or Atom feed for ruby-talk other than from the =
mirrors?
>>=20
>> Sorry for all the questions, but the "moderation" thread raised an
>> important point: Grouping by thread and reading in a news reader
>                                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^
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>> may be preferable to getting individual emails. Worth a try.
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> Man, am I really *that* old? To me, "news reader" means "Usenet=20
> client", not "feed reader".

Right you are. My terminology stands corrected. The problem with Usenet
-- actually, the problem with the lists I read -- is that many, if not
most are not mirrored on Usenet. For e.g., I can't find any of the =
Google
Groups like rSpec, Rails, Haml, etc. mirrored on Usenet.

> Which, incidentally, is how *I* read ruby-talk, ehm sorry, I meant it=20=

> is how I read *comp.lang.ruby*. And it works like a charm, mainly=20
> because, unlike e-mail, RSS and Atom, Usenet was *specifically=20
> designed* for discussion.
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> Threading works perfectly, because proper threading support is=20
> actually a required part of the standard since day 1. Unlike e-mail,=20=

> where threading only works if both the sender and the recipient=20
> implement it properly (and it is *not* a required part of the=20
> standard, so there *are* actually mail clients which *don't* do it=20
> properly, including this thing called GMail that you might have heard=20=

> of).

I will grant you that threading works infinitely better in a Usenet
reader. But, again, many of the lists I read are syndicated via RSS
or Atom and not mirrored to Usenet :(

> [Actually, to be fair, there are sometimes threading problems. But=20
> they don't happen in the Usenet. They only happen when someone uses a=20=

> broken e-mail program to post to ruby-talk and then the=20
> ruby-talk-to-comp.lang.ruby gateway can't figure out which thread the=20=

> mail belongs to.]
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> It's basically an instance of "use the right tool for the job". E-mail=20=

> is for 1-1 communication, Atom is for 1-many, Usenet is for many-many.=20=

> Ruby-talk is many-many, ergo Usenet is the only sane choice.
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> Anyway, this doesn't really answer your question, but it is a viable=20=

> alternate solution. It's pretty simple, really: all Usenet clients=20
> have awesome threading support, because a) the standard requires it=20
> and b) they would be useless otherwise. (There are newsgroups which=20
> get literally several orders of magnitude more traffic than=20
> comp.lang.ruby, Usenet clients simply *have* to have good support for=20=

> threading and filtering.)

If I'm just missing some Usenet groups, I'm sure happier with that as
a solution, but my impression is that as long as people are putting =
stuff
on Google Groups, the mirroring to Usenet will be limited. Yes?

> That was my 2c.
>=20
> jwm

And a good $.02 it was!=