[leafnode-list] Re: leafnode-2 local news to web forum (or FUDforum)

[Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@xxxxxx>]

Am 31.03.2014 22:27, schrieb Bulgrien, Kevin:

> 2) I had some trouble getting FUDforum to render nested forums sanely
> when newsgroup names contained more than three levels
> (site.group.subgroup.group).  To be fair, since this export to
> FUDforum only took place in about a 24-hour period of time, I did
> not go far down any particular path to resolving this.  For me, it
> was adequate to flatten the web forum representation of the groups
> structure to [site][group.subgroup][group].  While not ideal -
> especially with a deeper tree structure - since the project seems
> active, I suppose one could get these things resolved without a lot
> of travail.

I'd like to pick out a few items, and use the opportunity to pick a bit
at FUDforum - if it cannot handle holes in the message number sequence
FUDforum is broken and must be repaired.  Any NNTP/Usenet-like client
must be able to deal with holes in message sequences and -- while at it
-- must not ever replace existing Message-Ids (which some other NNTP
packages used to do in older versions).

Your report serves to support my prejudice that most PHP-based software
is written by people who only know where they want to get, but not how
to properly get there, making unwarranted assumptions to reach a certain
goal quickly -- but not robustly.
  This is a prejudice and there are certainly decent PHP packages, but
personally I have only ever permitted one installation of PHP + Pear on
a locally-restricted server, and that's for FreeBSD's Tinderbox package
building.

> 3) Where groups exist like: site.group and site.group.subgroup exist
> where both have messages, I had some trouble getting FUDforum to
> render the forums sanely.  Again, I did not push really hard to
> resolve this, as using a "general" forum for site.group.subgroup
> seemed adequate for our usage.

Adding newsgroups where one group name is the prefix of another, longer
name, has always been frowned upon in Usenet because it caused issues to
no end through all the software, and is expressly forbidden in many of
the major established hierarchies, but frequent in anarchistic
hierarchies like alt.*.

Arguably leafnode-2 could check for and reject such mispractice for its
own local groups, but it's infeasible for external groups unless you
want to hide externally available groups.

> All in all, FUDforum looks commendable, and I probably will
> transition to using it on a home server as well.  In short, with
> appreciation for leafnode-2, I find myself bidding farewell to
> something I've been using since about '01 and can't help but wish
> it well even though it seems to have entered its sunset years.

Given the amount of work that has gone into it in the past few years,
the feedback that is coming in, and my spare time competing with other
open source projects, I find that the facts how much work has gone into
leafnode-2 have refuted my plans, and more importantly that the user
base of Usenet-based technology appears to be diminishing and moving to
mailing lists, and - what I personally find worse - web forums.

While the latter usually ship with reasonable full-text search, I find
them extremely inconcise and I frequently watch web forums haunted with
slapping people for posting duplicate information, not reading, and
everything -- which was much less in Usenet.

The Lua contributor, Clemens Fischer, has disappeared, without my having
any means of contact and even checking whether he's doing fine and has
just lost interest (which would be fine).


Not having a client does not count, however.  Perhaps your corporate
policy does not permit Thunderbird nor a purchased Outlook, I never felt
that leafnode-2 was predominantly used in corporations, and was never
advertised for such purposes.
-- 
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