Message boards via e-mail, not Gemini

[cmccabe at rawtext.club]

Oops, I meant to say I started on it at the beginning of *last* year.

cmccabe


On Fri, Jan 08, 2021 at 02:17:24PM +0000, cmccabe at rawtext.club wrote:
> Hi All.
> 
> On this topic, yet digressing a bit from Gemini, I started working on a
> bulletin board (and more*) system that supports full interaction via email --
> and only via email. The system is called friSBEe, where the SBE stands for
> service by email.  I created it at the beginning of this year but haven't
> touched it much since.  It's pretty raw, but also very flexible and could
> easily be extended to support Gemini connections.
> 
> If you're interested in this, check out: https://rawtext.club/~frisbee/  And
> feel free to contact me if you would like to test it out.
> 
> * features include a BBS, a blog system, a choose-your-own text adventure,
>   messaging between users (yes, text messages on top of text email), and a few
>   others.
> 
> cmccabe
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 08, 2021 at 03:02:41PM +0100, nothien at uber.space wrote:
> > I've been reading recent threads about message boards on Gemini, and
> > thinking about the idea of gemlog-based replies (which have been around
> > for quite a while now).  People have been dedicating a lot of time and
> > thought to making messageboard-like systems work over Gemini (e.g. ew0k
> > and their CGI script for receiving notifications to replies to gemlogs,
> > and see the more recent threads), but I don't see the point of doing
> > this.  We already have e-mail based message lists, and we've been using
> > them neatly for long-form (and to a lesser extent medium-form and
> > short-form) discussions for a while now.  E-mail has some of the
> > following advantages:
> > 
> > * decentralized / federated: there's no single source for e-mail,
> >   everybody has copies of the entire thing.  People can also make e-mail
> >   threads, particularly of messageboards/lists publicly accessible, like
> >   the archives for this mailing list, at
> >   https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/.
> > 
> > * well-established system: e-mail has been around for way longer than
> >   Gemini has.  I know we all here love Gemini, but e-mail is going to
> >   work better for a lot of people.  There are already tons of e-mail
> >   server setups and mail clients which people use - there's no need to
> >   develop more.
> > 
> > * notifications: people subscribed to a mailing list get mails, and
> >   everyone already checks their mail.  There's no need to make new
> >   applications to poll gemini pages to see if there are replies or
> >   anything.
> > 
> > * just as much variety in mail content: by default, we use text/plain
> >   here, but MIME was created for e-mail in the first place.  If you're
> >   in love with Gemtext, just send text/gemini e-mails - we can read
> >   them, they're plain text.
> > 
> > Instead of creating message board systems on Gemini, create servers /
> > libraries to view e-mail archives on Gemini.  I argue that Gemini is not
> > designed to handle back-and-forth communication, but rather to serve
> > information in a single direction.  We must only use protocols for
> > things they are well-suited to handle, otherwise we risk losing their
> > original purposes and leave behind a fog of unhelpful but deep-rooted
> > conventions.
> > 
> > Of course, I may be wrong.  These are just my thoughts on this.  What
> > are yours?
> > 
> > ~aravk | ~nothien
> > 
> > P.S: If you don't like e-mail because it's too difficult to work with,
> > but you like UNIX / shell scripts, check out leahneukirchen's mblaze on
> > github.