Listserver/email inbound and outbound

[Bill Vlahos]

Mike,

I think this is a nifty idea once it is fleshed out a bit.
On Feb 10, 2005, at 3:46 AM, Mike Doub wrote:

> Hello List,
>
> I am thinking about writing a custom listserver type application but I 
> don't
> know that much about how to get my system to be a mail host.  I am 
> looking
> for advice about any tools or scripts that could get me started.
There was a very recent thread on how to make an email server directly 
from a Revolution app.
>
> I am interested in experimenting with the idea of a list server that 
> you
> subscribe to topics rather than to the whole list.  My idea is that 
> everyone
> would have an "announcement" channel that could be configurable by 
> keywords
> and searchable via the web.  The user then "subscribes" to topics of
> interest.
>
> This crazy idea came from trying to work the communication problem of
> wanting to be part of discussion about specific software bugs. Think of
> subscribing to the discussion tied to a specific bugzilla bug.  Most 
> folks
> have a few favorite bugs that they would like to monitor, but not 
> really all
> of them.
>
> I would appreciate people's thoughts on both the inbound and outbound 
> side
> of email, with Rev as the code managing the behavior of the list 
> server.
The toughest part of this is coming up with the new metaphor for 
choosing how to be selective. It seems to me that a keyword 
specification is problematic because both the subscriber and subscribee 
would be making somewhat arbitrary choices on the words that were not 
included at all (thereby missing the thread) or were included 
incidentally (thereby increasing the noise).

However, I think what might be really interesting would be not only the 
listserver type application but an information server application. I'm 
thinking of something like a bulletin board (either server based or 
client based [think RevNet]) where there would be channels of 
discussions. It seems like the most difficult opportunity is how to 
organize the channels. This could be a new type of application.

Bill Vlahos