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| Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #118447] |
Fri, 18 November 2005 15:11  |
Eclipse User |
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I'm planning to fully immerse myself in Eclipse in the coming months, but
I sure wish it was easier to access Eclipse discussion groups. There are
no mailing lists, to avoid having to manage spam avoidance. The only
Eclipse newsgroups aren't available on Google, and my company doesn't
allow outgoing NNTP connections. That leaves me with the "simple web
interface" as the only way to access these forums.
Is this a common problem? I already subscribe to numerous technical
mailing lists, all of which simply accept the problem of dealing with
spam. I don't have to deal with it much internally, as my company already
deals pretty well with incoming spam.
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| Re: Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #118507 is a reply to message #118492] |
Fri, 18 November 2005 18:34  |
| Eclipse User |
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Eric Rizzo wrote:
> David Karr wrote:
>> I'm planning to fully immerse myself in Eclipse in the coming months,
>> but I sure wish it was easier to access Eclipse discussion groups.
>> There are no mailing lists, to avoid having to manage spam avoidance.
>> The only Eclipse newsgroups aren't available on Google, and my company
>> doesn't allow outgoing NNTP connections. That leaves me with the
>> "simple web interface" as the only way to access these forums.
> A) There are Eclipse mailing lists, but they are targeted towards those
> interested in Eclipse development (ie the people that write Eclipse
> and/or plugins).
Yes, I saw those, but I didn't mention that, since they were obviously not
relevant.
> B) The archives of these newsgroups are searchable through Google. While
> that won't give you "real time" access as if you were using an NNTP
> client, it is better IMO than the "simple web interface."
My concern is the interface for posting and replying, not querying.
> C) I think there are newsgroup -> mail gateway services, like gmane.org,
> that might be able to bridge from the Eclipse NNTP servers to your email.
Gmane does mail -> newsgroups, not the other way around.
I guess if I'm going to get anything out of this, I'll have to appeal to
get an external NNTP connection. These other resources just don't do it.
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| Re: Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #118593 is a reply to message #118492] |
Sun, 20 November 2005 13:55 |
| Eclipse User |
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Eric Rizzo wrote:
> David Karr wrote:
>> I'm planning to fully immerse myself in Eclipse in the coming months,
>> but I sure wish it was easier to access Eclipse discussion groups.
>> There are no mailing lists, to avoid having to manage spam avoidance.
>> The only Eclipse newsgroups aren't available on Google, and my company
>> doesn't allow outgoing NNTP connections. That leaves me with the
>> "simple web interface" as the only way to access these forums.
>
> A) There are Eclipse mailing lists, but they are targeted towards those
> interested in Eclipse development (ie the people that write Eclipse
> and/or plugins).
It may be pointless to ask this at this point, but why did Eclipse go in
the direction of using newsgroups for user discussion? I follow and
contribute to a couple dozen different technical mailing lists, some
with somewhat small traffic, and some with relatively large traffic.
These include the netbeans, struts-dev, struts-user, and xsl lists.
Although spam is always a mild annoyance, the list management systems in
use seem to deal with it reasonably well. My company also has an
incoming spam filter, but the vast majority of the notes it marks as
spam on these lists are false positives.
There was a time when usenet newsgroups were very good for these kinds
of discussions. However, in the last few years, I find many companies
that won't allow NNTP through their firewalls. These are often larger
companies, that spend a great deal of money on security solutions.
Despite issues with spam, mailing lists are just more effective for
discussions like this.
I can see that even despite my reservations, the amount of traffic on
the eclipse newsgroups is pretty large. Nevertheless, I think it's
possible that participation might increase if "sanctioned" mailing lists
were used. Unsanctioned mailing lists (like the yahoogroups eclipse
list) aren't really relevant.
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| Re: Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #118599 is a reply to message #118593] |
Sun, 20 November 2005 16:10 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: bert.iphouse.com
In news:dlqgr3$r31$1@news.eclipse.org David Karr <david.karr@wamu.net>
wrote:
> There was a time when usenet newsgroups were very good for these kinds
> of discussions. However, in the last few years, I find many companies
> that won't allow NNTP through their firewalls. These are often larger
> companies, that spend a great deal of money on security solutions.
Mine's one of those, but we have a mechanism for punching holes in the
firewall if you can show you really need it. For example, everybody at the
site has access to Microsoft's server, and a growing number have access to
the Eclipse news server. We also have a "sanitized" regular newsfeed to
internal servers, but that's a different story.
> Despite issues with spam, mailing lists are just more effective for
> discussions like this.
Mailing lists are fine if only a couple of people at a site are interested
in participating. The idea of every Eclipse user/developer at my site
individually subscribing to several mailing lists would give our network
admin a stroke.
We used to have a handful of imaginary employees, each one subscribed to a
particular external mailing list, which we then gatewayed to our internal
news servers. Ironically, this died when the company did away with all
non-Exchange SMTP services and we lost control of the gateway process.
--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com
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| Re: Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #118678 is a reply to message #118593] |
Mon, 21 November 2005 13:52 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: eclipse3.rizzoweb.com
David Karr wrote:
> Eric Rizzo wrote:
>
>> David Karr wrote:
>>
>>> I'm planning to fully immerse myself in Eclipse in the coming months,
>>> but I sure wish it was easier to access Eclipse discussion groups.
>>> There are no mailing lists, to avoid having to manage spam
>>> avoidance. The only Eclipse newsgroups aren't available on Google,
>>> and my company doesn't allow outgoing NNTP connections. That leaves
>>> me with the "simple web interface" as the only way to access these
>>> forums.
>>
>>
>> A) There are Eclipse mailing lists, but they are targeted towards
>> those interested in Eclipse development (ie the people that write
>> Eclipse and/or plugins).
>
>
> It may be pointless to ask this at this point, but why did Eclipse go in
> the direction of using newsgroups for user discussion?
That's been asked before - you can do some archaeological research on
Google if you're really interested in the answer (I'm pretty sure it was
a matter of user and message volumes).
> There was a time when usenet newsgroups were very good for these kinds
> of discussions. However, in the last few years, I find many companies
> that won't allow NNTP through their firewalls. These are often larger
> companies, that spend a great deal of money on security solutions.
> Despite issues with spam, mailing lists are just more effective for
> discussions like this.
Take a look at HTTPort (http://www.htthost.com/httport.boa) which can
tunnel through a standard web prxy to get access to services like NNTP.
HTH,
Eric
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| Re: Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #119200 is a reply to message #119163] |
Mon, 27 July 2009 15:06 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: eclipse.ptoye.com
bewing@nexusbio.com (B Ewing) wrote:
> For example, is there a way to get an
> email when your question receives a reply?
I use Ameol here as my NNTP client (an off-line reader for the CIX
bulletin board), and this knows which messages you've posted/replied to,
and marks them for attention. Not the same as an email, I agree, but in
many ways more efficient. Are there dedicated NNTP clients which do the
same?
As Ameol is free, you could configure it just to read news and ignore the
bulletin board.
Peter
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| Re: Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #119368 is a reply to message #119163] |
Wed, 23 November 2005 15:38 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: eclipse3.rizzoweb.com
B Ewing wrote:
> To amplify on the comment about using Google, one can specically use the
> Advanced Search option to tell Google to look only in eclipse.org. This
> makes pre-post research a bit easier.
You can do that in Google without using the Advanced search option. Just
prefix your search query with "site:eclipse.org"
For example, to search eclipse.org for info related to Working Sets, use
this Google query:
site:eclipse.org "working sets"
HTH,
Eric
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| Re: Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #119566 is a reply to message #118666] |
Thu, 24 November 2005 09:14 |
 Eclipse Webmaster
Messages: 607353
Registered: July 2009 |
Senior Member |
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Every once in a while someone comes along and questions "why are you
using tool x instead of tool y". I'll set the record straight here so
that I can later refer to this article for the next person to ask.
It all boils down to what's working, the advantages and overhead of
switching to something new, what's wrong with what we have, and personal
preference. Some people prefer NNTP groups, some people prefer mailing
lists, some people prefer web-based forums -- there's no right answer
for everyone, and no matter what we choose, someone won't like it. As
long as most people do, I'm happy. Here's a sysadmin's view of several
tools we could use for discussions:
Mailing lists
- costly: you send out messages to everyone, regardless of wether they
want to read it or not. Busy groups like eclipse.newcomer and
eclipse.platform would suffer from this.
- people change their e-mail address often. Mailing list software can
trap and manage bounced e-mail most of the time, but you should see how
much mail I get related to our mailing lists each day - held messages,
uncaught bounces, spam, etc.
- prone to SPAM: because everyone gets a copy of the e-mail, it's a
bigger target for spammers.
Web-based forums:
- resource-hungry: pretty GUIs, pictures and databases ...
- cutesy: most of these forums look like they're for 12-year-olds
- registration required: although our news server is password-protected,
it's configured in your mail client once. None of this "I Forgot My
Password" garbage
- advertisements: although an eclipse.org forum would likely not have
any, I feel there's a lot of wasted real-estate
+ accessible: no software configuration required from the user's view,
which is a good thing
NNTP newsgroups
+ low management overhead: managing these groups is brainlessly simple
+ low bandwidth: users read only the messages they want, no graphics,
plaintext, threaded
+ low noize: so far our groups have been quite noize-free, which is
surprising.
- port 119 access required
I like the idea of opening port 80 on the news server (someone suggested
it elsewhere in this thread) and opening an enhancement request is the
best way to get it done.
D.
David Karr wrote:
> I would never suggest replacing NNTP with a web-based forum. That's
> even worse (for usability, at least). I find mailing lists much easier
> to use, for me at least (seeing as I can't even use NNTP from work).
> I'm sure mailing lists create other issues, but it's also clear to me
> that many organizations just learn to deal with that.
>
>
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| Re: Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #128024 is a reply to message #119761] |
Fri, 06 January 2006 14:56 |
Eclipse Webmaster
Messages: 607353
Registered: July 2009 |
Senior Member |
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For those with firewalls blocking outgoing access to port 119 for NNTP,
try pointing your newsreader to news.eclipse.org on port 80. This won't
work for those whose networks using Proxies, but hey, there's only so
much I can do...
D.
Eric Rizzo wrote:
> Eclipse WebMaster (Denis Roy) wrote:
>
>> I like the idea of opening port 80 on the news server (someone
>> suggested it elsewhere in this thread) and opening an enhancement
>> request is the best way to get it done.
>
>
> For those who want to chime in, vote, or just follow the progress:
> https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=117549
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| Re: Easier access to Eclipse discussions? [message #128036 is a reply to message #118447] |
Fri, 06 January 2006 14:56 |
Eclipse Webmaster
Messages: 607353
Registered: July 2009 |
Senior Member |
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For those with firewalls blocking outgoing access to port 119 for NNTP,
try pointing your newsreader to news.eclipse.org on port 80. This won't
work for those whose networks using Proxies, but hey, there's only so
much I can do...
D.
David Karr wrote:
> I'm planning to fully immerse myself in Eclipse in the coming months,
> but I sure wish it was easier to access Eclipse discussion groups.
> There are no mailing lists, to avoid having to manage spam avoidance.
> The only Eclipse newsgroups aren't available on Google, and my company
> doesn't allow outgoing NNTP connections. That leaves me with the
> "simple web interface" as the only way to access these forums.
>
> Is this a common problem? I already subscribe to numerous technical
> mailing lists, all of which simply accept the problem of dealing with
> spam. I don't have to deal with it much internally, as my company
> already deals pretty well with incoming spam.
>
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