December 06, 2012
Am 06.12.2012 07:26, schrieb Walter Bright:
> One mentioned that BB software allowed posting pictures. I kinda like that newsgroups don't do pictures - this is a programming forum. Pictures are needed in hotrod forums, but they're a waste of bandwidth here.

... and if you _really_ want to support pictures, doing so on a web front end is a piece of cake, even if NNTP is the back end. Nobody stops it from scanning for links, markdown, BBcode or whatever.

December 06, 2012
On 2012-32-05 23:12, js.mdnq <js_adddot+mdng@gmail.com> wrote:

> Eventually the legacy users will come over from/to the dark side when they see how much better it is.

Uhm. No.

And not just because we're old and grumpy, but because NNTP has some
serious benefits in comparison with bloated, painful, ugly, stupid
bloated forums that are mostly an impediment. Trust me, if we had a BB
instead of NNTP, D would not have been what it is.

-- 
Simen
December 06, 2012
On 2012-12-06 09:28, Sönke Ludwig wrote:

> ... and if you _really_ want to support pictures, doing so on a web front end is a piece of cake,
> even if NNTP is the back end. Nobody stops it from scanning for links, markdown, BBcode or whatever.

Syntax highlighted code would actual be quite nice to have in the posts.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
December 06, 2012
On 2012-10-06 04:12, js.mdnq <js_adddot+mdng@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 6 December 2012 at 02:59:37 UTC, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
>> On 12/05/2012 09:08 PM, anonymous wrote:
>>>
>>> Editing is an anti-feature. I think it's nice that mistakes are
>>> preserved. This is a forum for discussion, mistakes are expected,
>>> and editing can make it difficult to follow.
>>
>> +1
>>
>> I've been on plenty of forums where editing is allowed, and I hate it. If you're changing what you said, you're participating in a wiki page, not a conversation.
>
> Oh come on... so you're saying that if I make a mistake that changes the intent that I should just leave it alone or make a new post pointing out the mistake rather than being able to edit it?

Abso-fucking-lutely. Deleting and editing posts in a discussion is a plague
upon the internet. If the intent is information rather than discussion
(think wiki page), then editing is a good thing. This forum is *not* a wiki.


> You're just being ridiculous to be so... and hell, no one is forcing you to edit your mistakes to make it easier for others to understand. Not editing is much more harmful because it can cause a huge source of confusion on those that reply.  Now, that might be your intention, or may you are perfect and do not make mistakes, but it's not mine and I am not.

Editing is much more harmful because it will cause confusion when someone
replies to something that's no longer there.

Editing is much more harmful because history is not retained, and
information thus is lost.

Editing could be accepted if only appending to the post were allowed, and
if appended edits were clearly marked as such. This keeps the history,
makes it possible to add clarifications, and is easily implementable as a
reply.

-- 
Simen
December 06, 2012
On Thursday, 6 December 2012 at 01:13:50 UTC, Rob T wrote:
> I'm looking at the URL in my browser, and it's using http://forum.dlang.org.
>
> Sorry but I don't love it. I can't edit posts, it frequently hangs when refreshing, hangs when posting, and it breaks up threads frequently (like this one), which is rather unpleasant if you're trying to follow a lengthy conversation.

afaik, dfeed never breaks threads. They're broken by other clients.
December 06, 2012
On Thursday, 6 December 2012 at 13:32:31 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
>
> afaik, dfeed never breaks threads. They're broken by other clients.

Either way it's still busted.

--rt
December 06, 2012
On Wed, 05 Dec 2012 23:32:40 +0100
"js.mdnq" <js_adddot+mdng@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It would seem to me that nntp is somewhat dead(little support from software devs)

I'm having a hard time thinking of even one email client that doesn't also support NNTP.

> and while I like nntp to some degree it just lacks too many feature compared to BB's.
> 

I don't find most of those features particularly useful. Avatars? Blech.

> Basically your stuck with the nntp protocol and trying to upgrade it is futile. (and talk about spam, newsgroups are loaded with them).
> 

This one only gets a little bit of spam.

> Since BB's are pretty popular, free, and usually well designed, I wouldn't see why it would hurt to even have them in parallel. Eventually the legacy users will come over from/to the dark side when they see how much better it is.
> 

I used to be die-hard message board fan for many years. Then I came over to D (before the good web interface it has now) and started using NNTP with a proper non-web client. *Now* I find NNTP to be vastly better.

My *one* problem with NNTP is that there's no standard and universally-supported URL system for it, especially not one that takes into account the fact that some newsgroups (like this one) exist only on ONE specific server.

Also, regarding all the talk about "legacy", I should point out that
"newer" is not equivalent to "better". (Just look at Win8! ;) )

December 06, 2012
On Thu, 06 Dec 2012 02:13:49 +0100
"Rob T" <rob@ucora.com> wrote:
> 
> My guess is that the people using a newsreader are OK, but a ton of people prefer to use web browsers, I would hazard a guess that most people who use the Internet don't even know what a newsreader is.
> 

While that may be true, it's also very true that most people who use the web don't even know what a *web browser* is. So basically, "People are stupid" is all that really amounts to.

December 06, 2012
On Wed, 5 Dec 2012 18:40:10 -0800
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 06, 2012 at 03:08:16AM +0100, anonymous wrote:
> > On Thursday, 6 December 2012 at 01:41:55 UTC, js.mdnq wrote:
> [...]
> > >What I do know is that editing will never be available with nntp and that is a severe restriction... in 2051 there will be no way to edit/delete posts here and fix mistakes. That tells you a lot about how dead the nntp protocol is. Sure there is a chance.... but about the same as a chance in hell... which, I think, is sorta like winning the lotto.
> > 
> > Editing is an anti-feature. I think it's nice that mistakes are preserved. This is a forum for discussion, mistakes are expected, and editing can make it difficult to follow.
> 
> +1. Editing encourages sloppy posting. Which is OK for casual discussions, but not for technical discussions like we have here. It also messes up history, because I can reply to something that's later changed or deleted, then whoever browses the archives won't be able to make head or tail of the discussion.
> 

There is such a thing as limited editing. Ex: Allow edits for maybe 5-10 minutes after initial posting, or until someone replies, whichever comes first. That sort of thing works out fine, and I'd actually quite like to have it.

However, our current approach of amending a post via a follow-up reply is still something I find perfectly acceptable.

I do think what's needed though is an updated equivalent to NNTP, so that NNTP's few limitations can be overcome without forcing the abomination of web "apps" on everyone. Unfortunately that'll probably never happen, except possibly as some goofy REST API.

December 07, 2012
On Thursday, 6 December 2012 at 18:04:54 UTC, Rob T wrote:
> On Thursday, 6 December 2012 at 13:32:31 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
>>
>> afaik, dfeed never breaks threads. They're broken by other clients.
>
> Either way it's still busted.
>
> --rt

nntp doesn't support bans, does it? So it's basically unfixable unless you migrate from nntp to something else.