Why do programmers still use mailing lists?

Question

Why do many open source projects collaborate primarily through mailing lists rather than through, say, forums? I may be ignorant in my assessment, but I, along with my communication teacher, think mailing lists are rather inefficient:

• It's hard to reference old messages. You have to wait until an archiving site picks up the message you want to link to, then look it up.
• It's hard to reply to messages you haven't received from subscription, since you have to manually copy the sender and message contents.
• It's impossible to moderate threads of discussion. Posts cannot be deleted or modified without supernatural powers.
• It's tricky to keep threads together (namely, to ensure all participants in the conversation are copied/replied to).
• It's tricky for users to participate in multiple high-volume mailing lists, as they have to subscribe and set up filters (or just be really involved).

What real edge do mailing lists have that didn't occur to me?

Answer 1

In addition to the "because they are used to it" arguments, email has a few other huge advantages:

1. You already have an email address, no need to sign up for yet another messageboard account for every project.
2. With a messageboard, you have to actively visit the page and refresh it to see new messages. On the other hand, most people have their email client (Outlook, Mail, Gmail) open all day and it refreshes automatically as soon as a new message comes in.

In short, using a messageboard requires me to change my habits in a significant way. On the other hand, mailing lists fit simply & easily into my existing routine, so adoption is much easier.

Answer 2

The Real Edge (tm) that mailing lists have is with less busy projects. In order for a web based forum to be successful, it needs a core of people constantly present who can respond to questions, provide suggestions, and moderate it. But if a board only has a couple posts a week or month, many people interested in the topic (be it an open source project, a commercial project, hobby, whatever) wont regularly visit the board because there's rarely anything new there.

What ends up happening then, is the board becomes what you might call a b-tch session. People only go there to post a bug report or when they have a problem/complaint. But since not a lot of people are visiting regularly, you just end up with a lot of complaints/problems without responses, and very little community building.

If you have a mailing list, those questions, rather than being seen by only the small subset of members who think to visit the web forum that week, are delivered to everyone on the list. They are much more likely to be seen by someone who can actually answer the question.

Once the project gets large enough, moving to a board often makes sense, as at that point people are getting deluged with email.

imo, my favorite way of organizing these things is via newsgroups, but they have fallen out of favor. Groups allowed you, with a newsreader, to see all the new topics on all the groups you follow (benefit of the email list), but with the threaded discussion capability of a web forum. Unfortunately, particularly among non-technical people, requiring users to have a newsreader and set up the groups is a total no-go.

Answer 3

It's hard to reference old messages. You have to wait until an archiving site picks up the message you want to link to, then look it up.

Assuming your listserv is working properly, this isn't an issue, since we're talking about old messages (referencing new messages might be problematic).

It's hard to reply to messages you haven't received from subscription, since you have to manually copy the sender and message contents.

If only someone would design a feature - perhaps even one integrated into the OS shell itself - for easily selecting and duplicating text. Perhaps it could be modeled after some increasingly-anachronistic real-world activity, like scrapbooking.

(I'm not actually sure what you're referring to here; continuing private threads in public tends to be a manual operation regardless of the software involved)

It's impossible to moderate threads of discussion. Posts cannot be deleted or modified without supernatural powers.

The reverse argument is that it's much harder for a rogue list owner to re-write history by deleting portions of the conversation that disagree with him, since one or more users will likely have their own copies.

It's tricky to keep threads together (namely, to ensure all participants in the conversation are copied/replied to).

Proper client software should handle this easily, as well as provide more flexible display and ordering of threads than most web-forum software allows.

It's tricky for users to participate in multiple high-volume mailing lists, as they have to subscribe and set up filters (or just be really involved).

High-volume forums are no easier. If anything, it's harder (if not impossible) to configure filters in web-forum packages. Either you're "really involved", or you're probably missing something.

What real edge do mailing lists have that didn't occur to me?

Privacy by default, without "yet another website account". Quick to set up. A natural progression from informal email chains as the group grows. No breaking context to move from email to web when processing replies. Familiar to almost everyone (yeah, yeah, Korean kids / the Facebook generation don't use email...)

Answer 4

I prefer mailing lists over forums because it's easier. Forums require me to actively go out and do something extra (namely visit yet another web site) repeatedly. Whereas a mailing list sends the messages right to someplace I always have to have open anyways. Single point of contact (mailing list) vs. multiple points (forums). Interrupt driven (mailing list) vs. polling (forums).

There does seem to be a generational thing going on here, but I don't know that it's so much "what you've grown up with" as it is "the stage of life you're in". Now that I'm older, I've got so many more (outside of computer-land) obligations that I just don't have the time anymore to actively go and seek out forums. If it just comes into my mailbox though, it gets handled.

Answer 5

Most of all for flexibility -- it's easy to provide a web-based archive of a mailing list, while still allowing users to use their email client of choice to interact.

Going with a forum instead not only chooses a web-based view for historical messages (easy to provide with either technology!), but locks the users into using a web-based tool for interacting with the forum.

Put differently, using the web to interact with an email-based forum is a solved problem; using email to interact with a web-based forum? Not so much.

Now consider that many developers may routinely follow a dozen or two forums, and consider which is more attractive -- setting up a unique login and password for each one, and learning a separate user interface for each one, or interacting with all of them via an identity you've already long established (your email address), using one tool to see (and archive, and search) them all?

Answer 6

Because no-one has created a better way to do it. By better i mean suited and able to integrate in current development environments.

Maybe Google Wave was in some way a more proper tool but it didn't take off.

Answer 7

Bare email in itself already has everything you want. Responding to a specific message, quoting a specific passage, forwarding an interesting post to a friend of yours. On top of that, you can add anything you want.

Everybody programmer has email. And most of them use a decent mail client. A client they chose and they like. A client that aggregates their news feeds, their personal mail, their work mail. And their mailing list mail. Using a forum only introduces unnecessary fragmentation.

Proper email clients give you all the features you want (bookmarking, filtering, tagging, marking read/unread (something you can't do in forums)). They work the same for any kind of email.

So a mailing list leaves control to its users, while a forum locks them in the limited features it provides. Programmers like to stay in control. Thus they have a tendency to prefer mailing lists.

Answer 8

Habit - Several people post questions about generating interest in open source projects. Sometimes you start with a mailing list of people you know and never switch over to something else.

For the users:

• easier to flame mispellings with spell checker (gotcha)
• easier to complain to list admin
• They have memorized the 'alt' sites they recommend

You can find the joke here: http://www.ahajokes.com/com009.html

Answer 9

For the same reason they use vim or Emacs: technological conservatism.

Also mailing lists provide a "lowest common denominator" interface. And the fact that they can scare off less motivated people can be a Good Thing (less trolls).