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Created attachment 197449 [details] Screenshot of Mozilla's Bugzilla NNTP Ever since we've implemented the Forums web app, there have been problems with the bridging to and from NNTP. SPAM control remains another issue -- when SPAM is reported, we need to erase the SPAM messages from the Forums and from NNTP. In the last 365 days, a total of 63,269 messages have been stored on the NNTP server. 43,473 of them, or just under 70% have been submitted by the Forums software. In the previous year, only 44% of NNTP posts came from the Forums, so the Forums are definitely increasingly popular. NNTP is a dying species -- not many OSS forums support it, and as you can see, those that do don't support it perfectly. I see similar problems with the NNTP/Forums at Mozilla.org -- just look at the screenshot, which shows bad threading, new threads as replies, etc. It's a mess. I know there are many die-hard NNTP fans out there, but considering the issues, is it time we consider deprecating NNTP to focus on more modern ways of communicating?
> I know there are many die-hard NNTP fans out there, but considering the issues, > is it time we consider deprecating NNTP to focus on more modern ways of > communicating? Focus on more modern but less productive ways of communication? I'm not a die hard NNTP fan, but a web based interface is just less efficient compared to a standalone app. E.g. answering a post on a newsgroup can be done from a NNTP reader with a few keystrokes. Answering a forum post involves a rather long mouse click-stream (meaning I spent more time on navigating forums than on answering questions). If NNTP has to go, why not convert everything to (open) mailinglists? That way there would only be a single channel. And E-Mail is definitely not aging. :)
-1000 You must be joking ! Let's deprecated the forums! The problem is that there is no good (single) new technology to replace NNTP. The best I have been able to setup (outside eclipse) is using gmane in combination with google groups. gmane acts as a relay hub. Those that want web based go to google, those that want email or just consume via RSS do so. Have not seen issues with threads going out of sync.
-1 Not that I know the technical issues (so I'm not saying it should be easy) but it seems odd that one can't support web access and NNTP properly. :-(
-infinity. If something has to be deprecated, it should be the forums.
-1 NNTP is the most reliable and adequate thing for me to talk to our users in a threaded way. Only the thought about taking it away from me feels similar to cutting off 9 of 10 fingers!
-1 I'm using NNTP on a daily basis and it's the only mechanism that actually does the job. I have access to everything everytime. I have my Thunderbird search capabilities, threading, etc. If the network is down, I can still read everything that my newsreader has downloaded. NNTP rocks!
Denis, the numbers don't really show which are questions and which are answers. I suspect that forums offer a good way of asking questions while NNTP is the power-tool of choice for answering those. I'm biased, though. I really like NNTP.
I saw bug 348449 before this one ... surprised I haven't stated my preference yet, but I use/prefer NNTP clients overs web based interfaces.
-1.
> is it time we consider deprecating NNTP to focus on more modern ways of > communicating? No.
I have heard, but can't find reference to it now, that some corporations block NNTP port in their firewalls, so users at those corporations would need to use the web based interfaces. I do not know why NNTP would be blocked, but if there is an increase in that blocking, that might explain apparent increased use of forums. I mention this since the increase in forum posts might not be due to user preference, but (partially) a reflection of changing corporate policies? I am just speculating, but if anyone knows more about if/why/how much NNTP ports would be blocked, I'd find that interesting. Probably not relevant to this bugzilla entry ... but interesting. (And, goes without saying ... I am not asking for company secrets!)
(In reply to comment #11) > I do not know why NNTP would be blocked, but if there is an increase in that > blocking, that might explain apparent increased use of forums. I mention this > since the increase in forum posts might not be due to user preference, but > (partially) a reflection of changing corporate policies? I am just speculating, > but if anyone knows more about if/why/how much NNTP ports would be blocked, I'd > find that interesting. Probably not relevant to this bugzilla entry ... but > interesting. (And, goes without saying ... I am not asking for company > secrets!) AFAIK some NNTP host binary groups (as in warez/piracy). It's probably easiest to just block NNTP completely than to use a white-/blacklist. Suffering from this myself right now (university network) btw.
-1 We are currently integrating "forums" into the workbench. There is no API for the current fudforum that we can consume easily. There is no general API for forums, they use propriety formats instead of a protocol like NNTP. I suggest to get rid of fudforum and use forum software that has an inbuilt NNTP server and is proud of that. In that way there will be no integration problems.
I just noticed in the SLES 12 release notes that inn is now dropped. That means if we upgrade our NNTP server, the NNTP function will go away. https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLES/12/#fate-317034 Perhaps time for some of you geezers* to accept that NNTP was cool about 17 years ago. * I mean that in the most polite and respectable way possible :)
By way of comparison, they have also removed UI support for configuring modems, which is a technology that shares its fame within the same century as NNTP.
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #15) > By way of comparison, they have also removed UI support for configuring > modems, which is a technology that shares its fame within the same century > as NNTP. The advantage is that NNTP is an actual widespread protocol that people can connect to. If anyone wanted to get the forum content, how would this be done without NNTP?
I would probably stop answering forum questions if I couldn't use my convenient and fast NNTP client anymore! Are there alternative/better NNTP daemons available in SLES 12? Or can the inn tool be installed separately?
(In reply to Wim Jongman from comment #16) > The advantage is that NNTP is an actual widespread protocol that people can > connect to. This applies to CVS and SVN too. But people are moving to something else these days. Frankly, this also applies to READMEs which where cool 17 years ago and are now cool again (with some markdown). Disclaimer: I'm still biased. I like NNTP. But I realized that today I answer more questions on stackoverflow like sites than via NNTP. Also, I think the forums suck. The web ui is terribly inefficient to NNTP. Denis, I believe in order to convince us geezers* to leave NNTP behind you need something more compelling than today's forums. * Which you (and me too) mean in the most polite and respectable way possible :)
Created attachment 248393 [details] What can replace this? It's not practically feasible to replace the attached view with the current web-based forum's view. A browser window with 37 tabs each of which gives me no feedback about what I've already looked at and what needs attention is neither cool, modern, nor effective.
> The advantage is that NNTP is an actual widespread protocol that people can > connect to. If anyone wanted to get the forum content, how would this be > done without NNTP? HTTP? Or is that not widespread enough yet? :) > I would probably stop answering forum questions if I couldn't use my > convenient and fast NNTP client anymore! Hmmm... I don't have a problem with NNTP per se, but more the error-prone bridge between forums and NNTP. In my fantasy life, the forums have an NNTP front-end which interacts with the forums database, not a replica of it. > Denis, I believe in order to convince us geezers* to leave NNTP behind you > need something more compelling than today's forums. No disagreement -- I'm simply looking to reduce the amount of services webmasters must maintain. That our rather conservative OS will no longer support NNTP (and CVS) is a prod in that direction. > What can replace this? Each forum is available as an RSS feed. The RSS entries are missing links back to the forum posts (what were they thinking), but it would give you the same view as what you have now.
I have to repeat my -1. For sure I will stop answering any questions if I can't use my preferred news reader.
(In reply to Eike Stepper from comment #17) > I would probably stop answering forum questions (In reply to Dani Megert from comment #21) > I have to repeat my -1. For sure I will stop answering any questions I'm always puzzled by these statements from such progressive developers. Your user communities have chosen different, more modern tools (such as Stack Overflow) for interacting with others. We certainly can't all stay on NNTP and watch as our user base dwindles to zero? A comment on another bug also got my attention. Arieh Bibliowicz 2013-02-05 16:47:58 EST "I love eclipse, but the old style of eclipse (bugzilla, NNTP and others) tells a lot about what is eclipse. If you have old user interfaces, outdated web sites, etc, why would someone use your products? We have not enabled NNTP for Polarsys, LocationTech, IoT and they do just fine. The plethora of striving projects on GitHub also do just fine and I suspect part of that is the modern user interface (I personally dislike it, but you can't argue with results). I am really sorry -- status quo (Forums + NNTP) is generally not working and I feel we need to evolve. Ultimately, no solution can please everybody. It is what it is. NNTP has got to go. As soon as www.eclipse.org migrates to SLES 12 the NNTP server is coming down. (In reply to Prakash Rangaraj from comment #4) > -infinity. > > If something has to be deprecated, it should be the forums. Agreed -- forums will probably be next.
I think that our users and we might have different requirements. If a user only posts a question every once in a while she might be happy with some zero-install-effort UI, a web browser. I feel more like a help center agent and continuously monitor many newsgroups. That's already very time-consuming and I'd (more than) hate to lose the least bit of my used convenience when doing that. And I think that nobody asked for abandoning whatever our valuable users prefer to ask their questions. Apart from some minor (?) problems with the NNTP/forum gateway that seemed like an ideal solution to make us all happy. So, why would it make sense to change anything about that?
Actually, I'm not sure why Denis needs to ask permission for this anyway. Just do it. These services are not about us individually but about the greater good. Denis and the gang at the foundation have a much better sense of the greater good than we do and I appreciate their efforts. There will always be people who complain, but there's usually, and definitely in this case, many more who would be happy with the decision but say nothing.
> greater good. Denis and the gang at the foundation have a much better sense > of the greater good than we do and I appreciate their efforts. Does "we" include everybody or just us geezers? > There will always be people who complain, but there's usually, and > definitely in this case, many more who would be happy with the decision but > say nothing. That is the mother of all arguments.
I'm for removing it. People will find other ways to post and interact with the forums if they really want to. Or we just move support to Stackoverflow, like a lot of project do. So I say kill it. Kill it with fire!
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #22) > "I love eclipse, but the old style of eclipse (bugzilla, NNTP and others) > tells a lot about what is eclipse. If you have old user interfaces, outdated > web sites, etc, why would someone use your products? I count eight to nine negative votes and one (or two if you count Doug) in favor¹ of removing NNTP in this bug. If you remove NNTP anyway, what is this telling us about Eclipse? ¹ I guess we see so few positive votes here because Bugzilla has such an old style user interface
(In reply to Markus Kuppe from comment #27) > I count eight to nine negative votes and one (or two if you count Doug) in > favor¹ of removing NNTP in this bug. The majority of users who chose Forums have already voted. > If you remove NNTP anyway, what is this > telling us about Eclipse? That we are evolving our infrastructure to match the needs of our users. > ¹ I guess we see so few positive votes here because Bugzilla has such an old > style user interface Instead of trolling, perhaps you can offer up some constructive advice? If you say status quo, Forums and NNTP is the best we can do for ourselves and for our community, I will be very sad.
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #28) > Instead of trolling, perhaps you can offer up some constructive advice? If > you say status quo, Forums and NNTP is the best we can do for ourselves and > for our community, I will be very sad. The only person trolling is you on twitter. plonk
I was, for a long time, one of the hardcore NNTP users. The FUDForum UI is, as everyone can see, not very good. But that's the only option that was available at the time to satisfy all the requirements. However, I've adapted and now use the web forums daily; I haven't used NNTP in my TB in at least 3 years. It is indeed possible to migrate. I've yet to see any response to the suggestion of RSS as a replacement for NNTP for those of you who want forums monitoring in your mail client. The big limitation obviously is that you can't reply directly via RSS, but if the feed articles were fixed to include a Reply link, would there be any other major barrier to acceptance as an NNTP alternative?
(In reply to Markus Kuppe from comment #29) > (In reply to Denis Roy from comment #28) > > Instead of trolling, perhaps you can offer up some constructive advice? If > > you say status quo, Forums and NNTP is the best we can do for ourselves and > > for our community, I will be very sad. > > The only person trolling is you on twitter. > > plonk If you can't stay civil, please remove yourself from the conversation. I expect better from the Eclipse community.
(In reply to Eike Stepper from comment #23) > I think that our users and we might have different requirements. If a user > only posts a question every once in a while she might be happy with some > zero-install-effort UI, a web browser. I feel more like a help center agent > and continuously monitor many newsgroups. That's already very time-consuming > and I'd (more than) hate to lose the least bit of my used convenience when > doing that. > > And I think that nobody asked for abandoning whatever our valuable users > prefer to ask their questions. Apart from some minor (?) problems with the > NNTP/forum gateway that seemed like an ideal solution to make us all happy. > So, why would it make sense to change anything about that? Eike has identified the crux of the problem: the impedance mismatch between the masses, the seekers, and a small but valuable group of providers. Many of the seekers are also providers, but I doubt any of that small group of providers are ever seekers. Those two groups have different requirements around forums, and FUDForum was, at the time, the only/best option to satisfy both. But we've now realized, after several years, that it really doesn't satisfy the "seeker" base very well; there are lots of *much* better alternatives for that group. The question is, do all of those options abandon the "providers" group?
(In reply to Eric Rizzo from comment #31) > > If you can't stay civil, please remove yourself from the conversation. I > expect better from the Eclipse community. It is not clear to me who you mean by that comment. (In reply to Denis Roy from comment #20) > > The advantage is that NNTP is an actual widespread protocol that people can > > connect to. If anyone wanted to get the forum content, how would this be > > done without NNTP? > > HTTP? Or is that not widespread enough yet? :) NNTP is a low level message transfer protocol that could possibly run over HTTP but could not be replaced by it because it has no defined structure in terms of message transfer.
With NNTP we have freedom, with StackOverflow we are in a prison. SO is riding a wave like Twitter and Facebook do now and Hotmail and Napster did earlier. Frankly, I am surprised that you flame so hard against NNTP with the "old school" argument. There is nothing wrong with your vision to pursue something new, but it would be great if was backed by NNTP so that we could at least make sure that the content is not lost if the "new thing" goes belly up. Speaking about "belly up", what is the plan with the current forum content after you have shut it down?
It seems that we (people commenting on this bug) all agree that NNTP or FUDForum are not very appealing for the *majority* of the users. Am I right? Do we agree that we feel that they want something like StackOverflow (see http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/stack-exchange-clones for a good clone list) or a modern forum (e.g., Discourse). If we disagree on this point, we may ask for a poll about what the community want (actually, this poll seems a good idea in all cases ;)). Also, I feel that people who don't want NNTP to be deprecated actually don't love NNTP itself. They seems to love the tooling implementing the protocol. I would like to know what are the requirements of NNTP lovers? Is it about having an offline mode? Is it about having all the messages locally so that you can search in it? Is it about the integration with you mail client? Any other? Please, tell us what are the requirements that are important (or not) for you. This may help us find a solution that suit everyone.
I must say that the nature of some of the commentary on this Bugzilla is disappointingly personalized and negative. Thanks Mikael for taking a very constructive approach. I think most of us would agree that the current FUDForum is far from ideal. For those seeking information it's crude compared to something like Stackoverflow. And for those providing information, it's an abomination if you wish to monitor more than a handful of forums. So for me the requirement is to be able to monitor the postings on several dozen forums. In particular, I need to know which posting are new, i.e., which postings I personally haven't read yet. Right now, what Thunderbird provides is ideal for that purpose, but I really don't care if there were some other way or some other tool providing that service. So if there is some RSS solution that would integrate with Thunderbird (or provide a decent web front end), and even if the reply link required me to compose an answer in a browser, I would be okay with that. It would not likely be as good as what I have already, but I'm all for serving the greater good. Though I must say, in my personal ideals, it's awfully nice when the greater good doesn't involving draining all my life blood and giving it to those who are arguably more deserving of greater good than me.
Ed, would you be willing to give RSS in Thunderbird a try? See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-subscribe-news-feeds-and-blogs A few years back with TB was my primary mail client, I used its RSS capability quite a bit and it blended quite well with email and NNTP newsgroups. I'd like to hear your thoughts after trying it for a few days. Denis, any chance your team could get reply links or even links to the message in the web UI into the RSS feeds? So Ed (or anyone) could see what it really is like to use RSS to monitor *and* respond to messages?
There's no threading in the view... Maybe that's not possible with RSS?
(In reply to Ed Merks from comment #36) > So for me the requirement is to be able to monitor the postings on several > dozen forums. In particular, I need to know which posting are new, i.e., > which postings I personally haven't read yet. Right now, what Thunderbird > provides is ideal for that purpose, I monitor seven forums from Thunderbird, but I do not use NNTP, nor do I use RSS. I do it the Bugzilla way -- I went to the forums UI, hit the Subscribe link on the seven forums and get email notifications of new posts. The notification email I get in Thunderbird has a Reply link that sends me to the Forums UI. If I do reply to a thread, I get email notifications of subsequent replies (like Bugzilla's CC). That's how I do it, and I am not trying to sell the Forums to anyone. The only tool that will provide NNTP functionality is NNTP -- however, that's not where our users are, and from what I can see, there are no tools out there that can guarantee a perfect integration between NNTP and any other system. I really don't want to see anyone stop answering questions. But when I look at other user communities and none of them use NNTP, I wonder what the real blocker is...
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #39) Denis's approach confirms my suspicion that e-mail is where it's at! :) I did a search for "popularity of newsgroups vs forums" and apparently we are not the only ones that discuss their relative merits. I didn't see many convincing explanations, though, except "all you need for forums is a web browser". And, that suggests, to me anyway, that perhaps there are really are two "audiences". Those that only want to use easy stuff, like "browsers" for a few questions/answers and those that "do programming for living and have all sorts of tools installed"? (To state it in a highly oversimplified way). I'll make a radical suggestion: why try to "keep them in sync"? It sounds like *that* is the main problem? If that's really not possible, (or, takes a lot of overhead) why not them "live their own lives" and maybe this issue would solve itself in a year or so? That is, perhaps newsgroup traffic would drop to near zero for some groups, but still be "active" for others? Or ... maybe those using newsgroups would find they really did need to switch over to the forums, to have the same level of communication? Or, maybe there really is two types of communications going on, two different audiences, and they'd each serve their purpose? [And, no need to list all the counter arguments for this radical suggestion, for my sake, I think they are pretty obvious ... I'm just trying to think of something "out of the box" to be sure all bases are covered.] In all seriousness, I have seen (casual, intuitive observation) for many open source projects, "mailing lists" are often the primary communication channel, especially communication between the "the close-knit, extended team". And casual users use stack overflow. :) Put another way, while I'm the least knowledgeable person to comment on this, I know of few open source projects that offer their communities the infrastructure to do the kind of "community discussions" that we do at Eclipse. It is a nice service, either way it goes, and appreciate the effort that goes into it ... and everyone commenting on their opinions and preferences. = = = = = = = = = = = And for myself, I've expressed my preference for newsgroups before, and find them simpler to navigate, search, organize, "mark", "tag", and/or "watch", prioritize, etc. And ... I'm used to it! :) And, yes, I like them for the potential of "off-line use" ... but ... these days I am seldom offline. But, it is hard to beat a mail list combined with a good email client. :)
David, I'm not so sure it's a difference audiences that characterize the difference. I get the sense its more of a consumer vs producer issue. As a consumer of the service, it's no big deal to post via a web page and monitor your thread. It's minimal effort and requires little setup and preparation, other than getting an account, so from that point of view, is rather ideal for the consumer. As a producer, monitoring the activity of several dozen newsgroups requires more of a dashboard of some sort. Of course there are many more consumers than producers so it's clear the greater good favors the consumer and it's clear that the service provided by the producers must consider heavily the good of the consumer. However, without both sides of the equation, there really is nothing... I imagine Denis' suggestion results in something much like the RSS feed approach, which other than threading being missing, would be fine for me. And of course I can even have rules in Thunderbird to automatically route emails from specific newsgroup into categories so my normal mail is not interleaved with a flood of newsgroup email. But again, like my Bugzilla traffic, (which is often a flood as well), there is no apparent threading in the arrivals, which is annoying, but much more problematic for newsgroups than bugzilla (where I can see the whole thread in the bugzilla itself and must go there anyway to answer).
On a side note, the Nebula project's -dev list receives new forum posts: https://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/nebula-dev/ https://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/nebula-dev/msg02814.html This is a good, lightweight way for everyone to monitor forum activity without there being complex 2-way bridges.
FWIW: For other open source projects I have been using a combination of google groups and nntp via gmane. Have done so for years, and it works very well and it is bidirectional. If Eclipse wants to drop maintaining NNTP, then maybe collaborate with gmane?
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #39) > I monitor seven forums from Thunderbird, but I do not use NNTP, nor do I use > RSS. > > I do it the Bugzilla way -- I went to the forums UI, hit the Subscribe link > on the seven forums and get email notifications of new posts. The > notification email I get in Thunderbird has a Reply link that sends me to > the Forums UI. If I do reply to a thread, I get email notifications of > subsequent replies (like Bugzilla's CC). Can you explain this? There are no forums in Bugzilla. I cannot find a forums UI let alone a Subscribe link.
> So for me the requirement is to be able to monitor the postings on several > dozen forums. In particular, I need to know which posting are new, i.e., > which postings I personally haven't read yet. 1. Go to https://www.eclipse.org/forums/ 2. Log in if you're not already. 3. Locate the forums you wish to monitor, click to enter. 4. Hit the Subscribe link at the top. 5. Watch your Inbox as new posting notifications are sent there.
In bug 498973 the Forums <-> NNTP sync is once again broken. As we struggle with Infra issues of much more importance (see bug 499399), it is time for NNTP to no longer be part of the equation. I'll be shutting NNTP down for good on Aug 31. Sorry, we just cannot maintain it.
That totally sucks, on top of all the other bad infrastructure performance, it double sucks. And watching my inbox fill up, which it already does for far too many reasons, triple sucks. You offer nothing in terms of gmane either. That sucks too. But at least we have two weeks notice. Woo hoo.
It's the most heroic thing ever. Thank you Denis for modernizing our forums and focusing on our serious infrastructure problems instead of wasting time on NNTP.
(In reply to Doug Schaefer from comment #48) > It's the most heroic thing ever. Thank you Denis for modernizing our forums > and focusing on our serious infrastructure problems instead of wasting time > on NNTP. It's definitely and absolutely the most thoughtful, if not heroic, thing ever! And thank you Doug for the sentiments, especially for focusing on precisely those things that are most important for you personally, instead of wasting time answering questions on that pesky CDT forum.
(In reply to Ed Merks from comment #49) > And thank you Doug for the sentiments, especially for focusing on precisely > those things that are most important for you personally, instead of wasting > time answering questions on that pesky CDT forum. Each person contributes in the way that best suits them. We build a community so that it does not fall on one person to do it all. Doug clearly brings great value to the CDT community and user base. If he finds that his efforts are best invested elsewhere than on the forums, that is his prerogative. And I personally fully support and appreciate his efforts.
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #46) > In bug 498973 the Forums <-> NNTP sync is once again broken. As we struggle > with Infra issues of much more importance (see bug 499399), it is time for > NNTP to no longer be part of the equation. > > I'll be shutting NNTP down for good on Aug 31. Sorry, we just cannot > maintain it. Thanks for the notice. I assume you already have this planned, but a wider announcement would seem in order (such as to "committers mailing list"). Also, I assume you are aware there is not a one-one correspondence between forums and newsgroups? For example, in newsgroups, there is "eclipse.webtools". In the forums, as best I can tell, "ServerTools (WTP)" is what corresponds to "eclipse.webtools". If so, "ServerTools (WTP)" is an inaccurate title. Similarly, in the forums, sometimes WTP is referred to as "WTP", in other forums it is referred to as "Webtools". There might even be other names, as far as I know. Another example, there is an eclipse.tools.orbit newsgroup, but I could not see any Orbit forum. [Whoops, mistaken, I did just find it, not sure why I did not see it the first time.] I am just mentioning this as a "heads up". Perhaps all users of forums are used to the differences and those users are satisfied. But it would be difficult for me to follow your nice directions in comment 45 since I am not even which forums to "pick" for those newsgroups that I 'watch'. I am fine letting it "evolve" (i.e. not subscribe to any until I eventually find a reason to). And, of course, if there is some non-obvious mapping so it is "one-to-one", just with different, non-obvious names, it would be nice to publish that mapping somewhere. [Though, perhaps I am missing the obvious, as in the case of "Orbit" when I at first could not find it.] Thanks again,
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #46) > I'll be shutting NNTP down for good on Aug 31. Sorry, we just cannot > maintain it. In the past the solution was a migration of both forums and newsgroups to a new technology that might be good. I've been waiting in anticipation for a long time. I use the newsgroups every day, they stare at me in Thunderbird that I have to look at. I only ever go to the forums when I am aware that the newsgroups may be adrift. If you shutdown NNTP without a replacement, you eliminate my main communication with the wider community. "sucks" is too polite a word for such vandalism.
I'm also using Thunderbird NNTP to get a great overview of my unread messages at Eclipse.org and through Gmane.
NNTP (via Thunderbird) is also the primary mechanism used by the Sirius team for our newsgroup/forum. We've been forced to go through the web interface in the last few weeks because of synchronization issues, but everybody on the team considers it a regression in terms of useability and efficiency.
To everyone who is expressing pain at the loss of NNTP and/or displeasure with the current web forum software, please contribute to the related Bug 437064 and Bug 451571 to help find a suitable replacement. I'll say this: I'm disappointed to see so much complaining without a single suggestion about how to resolve the problem that Denis and team are facing - they simply can't maintain the NNTP infrastructure given the restrictions they face (resources, open-source requirements, web UI, etc). Unless we're willing to help solve the problem, griping is just noise. I was a long-time NNTP holdout, too, but I recognize the limitations and that the vast majority of our community has moved on.
By the way, I think a viable alternative to NNTP is to subscribe an email address to the forums you're interested in monitoring, then set up a rule in TB (or whatever mail client you prefer) to automatically push messages from the forums into appropriate folder(s). That way you can have a nice view of messages (including threading, local copies, unread counts, etc). Replying is just a matter of clicking the link in the emails. Not exactly like NNTP but I don't see why it's not viable.
> Thanks for the notice. I assume you already have this planned, but a wider > announcement would seem in order (such as to "committers mailing list"). Yes, it will go out shortly.
(In reply to Ed Merks from comment #49) > (In reply to Doug Schaefer from comment #48) > > It's the most heroic thing ever. Thank you Denis for modernizing our forums > > and focusing on our serious infrastructure problems instead of wasting time > > on NNTP. > > It's definitely and absolutely the most thoughtful, if not heroic, thing > ever! Sorry, Ed. I should have been more clear. I found your treatment of Denis and the webmaster team offensive. Denis mentioned turning off NNTP many months ago. I trust he's doing the best to keep our infrastructure working under the massive burden it's under. Less services means more cycles for others.
(In reply to Eric Rizzo from comment #56) > By the way, I think a viable alternative to NNTP is to subscribe an email > address to the forums you're interested in monitoring, then set up a rule in How does this work? I already subscribe so that I get new topic notifications, but I get nothing for the rest of the thread.
(In reply to Ed Willink from comment #59) > (In reply to Eric Rizzo from comment #56) > > By the way, I think a viable alternative to NNTP is to subscribe an email > > address to the forums you're interested in monitoring, then set up a rule in > > How does this work? I already subscribe so that I get new topic > notifications, but I get nothing for the rest of the thread. Ugh, that would be an unfortunate bug/feature. I just subscribed to the Newcomers forum, I'll see how it behaves.
Doug, keep in mind that for me personally this is beyond annoying and frustrating, and my comments are in a Bugzilla where I've been told, in the most polite and respectable way, that I'm a geezer: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=348464#c14 So let me be clear, in the most polite respectable way, that this totally sucks. Note others assert that "sucks" is too polite a word: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=348464#c52 I find your commentary on a Bugzilla about a service you care nothing about, because it simply doesn't affect you, inappropriate. No doubt I didn't say that in the most lovely way, that being a reflection of what I felt is, and was apparently, the offensive intent of your posting. All that being said, I am well aware that you, the webmaster and team, as well as a great many other people at Eclipse work their assets off to provide excellent support for a large community. We each do so in our own way. So given that I've posted more than 150 answers on just the eclipse.newcomers forum, I feel that entitles me to comment on the infrastructure I use to support that effort. I don't feel it's your place to comment about NNTP support and I certainly don't feel it's your place to take offense on behalf of the webmaster or his team. Denis has a thick skin. Also note that I'm absolutely sure you personally contribute to the community in dozens of valuable ways; answering forum questions is not the most valuable contribution one can provide, but it is one of the ways that I contribute daily. I'm also well aware that most of our collective hard work is simply taken for granted. That we only hear about problems and that when there are problems, all the other efforts we invest are simply overlooked. If the webmaster and team did a perfect job, we'd barely know they existed! As an example of that, Eike and I have spent weeks tuning p2's access to the download servers, e.g., caching a p2.index so that repeated requests to various flavors of content metadata will be not accessed on the server, improving how mirrors are utilized, and so on. No one notices that or says thanks for that, nor do we even expect that. But ironically, no one seems to care that the download server is trashed every Tuesday at 10:00 European central time, so nothing is being done about it: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=498116 Well, other than throwing new hardware to help better tolerate the not-to-be-fixed-any-time soon problem. Definitely kudos to more hardware Denis, because it's the only way you can address the problem yourself! On the other hand, when a glitch shows up with setups.zip becoming unavailable, we definitely here about it: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=463967#c17 Not only that, it's also apparently necessary to blame Oomph on cross projects with comments such as "This is not the first time that Oomph has taken our site down", as if this were a general recurring theme, which it is not. It makes me wonder when the first time was that Oomph took down the site? Oh well, this is the way of the thankless world in which we live. If we must take offense and give offense whenever someone complains about a problem, we'd certainly not be getting along with each other very well. It seems to me the main problem here is that FUDForum is not very good and doesn't have a good API, while NNTP is old, reliable technology. I understand that the webmaster and team are over taxed, so it's understandable that they want to reduce their workload by making syncing these two technologies be one problem less to address. Nevertheless that mega sucks.
With the mailing lists one can register an RSS feed, but FUDForum doesn't even support that, does it? That would at least be a more reasonable alternative... In FUFForum, clicking on "Unread messages" is a bad idea because this thing seems to think I've read all messages so I end up on an empty page with no visible navigation back to a page that isn't empty. Shouldn't it be considered read only have I have read a posting? Keep in mind that it's great that we make things easier for people to post questions, but when it becomes difficult to monitor and answer them with this mechanism, then answers will be in shorter supply, and that makes easy posting completely pointless.
Created attachment 263666 [details] Rss link (In reply to Ed Merks from comment #62) > With the mailing lists one can register an RSS feed, but FUDForum doesn't > even support that, does it? That would at least be a more reasonable > alternative... FUDForum does support RSS. Just click on the forum you want to monitor and go to the bottom of the page, you will see the link to the xml feed (see screenshot).
(In reply to Mikaël Barbero from comment #63) > FUDForum does support RSS. Just click on the forum you want to monitor and > go to the bottom of the page, you will see the link to the xml feed (see > screenshot). There appear to be two syndicate options, neither of which I understand. When I look at the help, I still do not understand the meaning of "syndicate". Please provide precise instructions on how to configure FUDForum (and Thunderbird) so that every FUDForum posting is relayed to appear as a Thunderbird message. --- If relaying to Thunderbird is not possible, I strongly request that switching off NNTP is delated until one of the options discussed in Bug 437064 or Bug 451571. I am delighted to move on, but killing NNTP without viable replacement is not moving on. Without NNTP, I think my support on my projects would have to change to: User message on FUDForum => New topic message to me Reply from me with a signature explaining why the Eclipse infrastructure requires the use of xxx-dev for further correspondence. This will unfortunately confuse the use of xxx-dev and require users to subscribe, but it is the only way I will see the thread.
(In reply to Ed Willink from comment #64) > (In reply to Mikaël Barbero from comment #63) > > FUDForum does support RSS. Just click on the forum you want to monitor and > > go to the bottom of the page, you will see the link to the xml feed (see > > screenshot). > > There appear to be two syndicate options, neither of which I understand. > When I look at the help, I still do not understand the meaning of > "syndicate". > > Please provide precise instructions on how to configure FUDForum (and > Thunderbird) so that every FUDForum posting is relayed to appear as a > Thunderbird message. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-subscribe-news-feeds-and-blogs#w_step-2-subscribe-to-feeds Note that only using Thunderbird as a rss reader will make you miss some messages if the number of post to the forum exceed the number of items the feed shows. I advise to use some always online rss reader (see http://bfy.tw/7I5P for a list). Personally, I use Tiny-tiny rss on openshift, and it works great!
(In reply to Mikaël Barbero from comment #65) > https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-subscribe-news-feeds-and- > blogs#w_step-2-subscribe-to-feeds Thanks. Looks promising. The hyperlink from the Thunderbird RSS feed to FUDForum overcomes one major problem; NNTP hyperlinks are horrible. > > Note that only using Thunderbird as a rss reader will make you miss some > messages if the number of post to the forum exceed the number of items the > feed shows. I advise to use some always online rss reader (see > http://bfy.tw/7I5P for a list). Personally, I use Tiny-tiny rss on > openshift, and it works great! The default RSS hyperlink ends ...&n=10 This can be changed to n=100 (but not more) fetching 100 messages on first subscription and presumably reducing the loss of too many messages hazard. Changing the polling interval from 100 minutes to 10 minutes may also reduce the hazard and make this a more viable replacement. The o= option appears to allow reading other than the most recent messages. Is there a tool that automatically reads old messages / is there an export that can be imported to catch up?
I've used the RSS feeds for a bunch of forums now. It's certainly not ideal that there is no threading, nor that I only seem to be able to fetch 100 messages. Could the threading be fixed? I suppose we're just screwed on the threading front, but at least there is a web link and in the browser there is the full thread. Could the 100 be increased? This usually shouldn't be a problem unless I go on a long vacation... In the end, it's horrible, but not criminally horrible, so I'm no longer considering committing a criminal act of retaliation. Is there no way to post a reply on FUDForum that intersperses with the post of the sender? I see there's a Quote button. So I supposed one can do a lot of tag editing, but that's certainly not an improvement over what I've used for 20 years. In fact the whole authoring experience is extremely poor. But I suppose the cool kids all love editing plain text edit tags, and that using a proper composer is for only greezers.
(In reply to Ed Merks from comment #67) > I've used the RSS feeds for a bunch of forums now. It's certainly not ideal > that there is no threading, nor that I only seem to be able to fetch 100 > messages. Could the threading be fixed? I suppose we're just screwed on > the threading front, but at least there is a web link and in the browser > there is the full thread. I could be persuaded that FUDForum+RSS+Thunderbird is now comparable to NNTP+Thunderbird. In some respects it is better. I had one message come in this morning on the Papyrus NNTP, Attachment had got lost. On RSS, attachment was also missing. But RSS provided a web link to the full message. > Could the 100 be increased? This usually shouldn't be a problem unless I go > on a long vacation... The documentation suggests that 100 is set by the forum admin, so perhaps yes. The top problems seem to be Thunderbird bugs/limitations. Thunderbird is Open Source so in our copious free time we could contribute extensions to: - reconstruct threading from similarly suffixed message titles - access all back messages on demand (using the o= to work through the list). - "Reply->to RSS" from within Thunderbird Maybe one of the many Thunderbird RSS Add Ons does this already, but none that obviously corresponds.
(In reply to Ed Merks from comment #67) > I've used the RSS feeds for a bunch of forums now. It's certainly not ideal > that there is no threading, nor that I only seem to be able to fetch 100 > messages. Could the threading be fixed? I suppose we're just screwed on > the threading front, but at least there is a web link and in the browser > there is the full thread. It seems that this reader has threading support http://www.sharpreader.net/ > Could the 100 be increased? This usually shouldn't be a problem unless I go > on a long vacation... It should be doable, maybe only by editing the php source code. I don't know where it is hosted in the infra, but webmaster can surely help about that. > > In the end, it's horrible, but not criminally horrible, so I'm no longer > considering committing a criminal act of retaliation. \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ > Is there no way to post a reply on FUDForum that intersperses with the post > of the sender? I see there's a Quote button. So I supposed one can do a > lot of tag editing, but that's certainly not an improvement over what I've > used for 20 years. In fact the whole authoring experience is extremely > poor. But I suppose the cool kids all love editing plain text edit tags, > and that using a proper composer is for only greezers. once we won't be required to support nntp sync, we should be able to investigate a more modern forum solutions to migrate to (and one that may give you an even less horrible experience ;))
(In reply to Ed Willink from comment #68) > (In reply to Ed Merks from comment #67) > > I've used the RSS feeds for a bunch of forums now. It's certainly not ideal > > that there is no threading, nor that I only seem to be able to fetch 100 > > messages. Could the threading be fixed? I suppose we're just screwed on > > the threading front, but at least there is a web link and in the browser > > there is the full thread. > > I could be persuaded that FUDForum+RSS+Thunderbird is now comparable to > NNTP+Thunderbird. In some respects it is better. I had one message come in > this morning on the Papyrus NNTP, Attachment had got lost. On RSS, > attachment was also missing. But RSS provided a web link to the full message. Wonderful!! > > Could the 100 be increased? This usually shouldn't be a problem unless I go > > on a long vacation... > > The documentation suggests that 100 is set by the forum admin, so perhaps > yes. > > The top problems seem to be Thunderbird bugs/limitations. Thunderbird is > Open Source so in our copious free time we could contribute extensions to: > > - reconstruct threading from similarly suffixed message titles > - access all back messages on demand (using the o= to work through the list). > - "Reply->to RSS" from within Thunderbird > > Maybe one of the many Thunderbird RSS Add Ons does this already, but none > that obviously corresponds. Except if you really want to stick with Thunderbird, I suggest to have a look at http://www.rssowl.org (https://github.com/rssowl/RSSOwl). It's built on Eclipse, so it should not be that hard for wizards like you to hack it ;)
(In reply to Ed Willink from comment #68) > > Could the 100 be increased? This usually shouldn't be a problem unless I go > > on a long vacation... > > The documentation suggests that 100 is set by the forum admin, so perhaps > yes. It's a setting in the admin control panel. I just bumped it to 250, but I'm not sure what, if any, impact that will have on performance.
Here are some RSS options from the admin pages - maybe these are published somewhere that mortal users can find them, if you find them please let us know. --- If enabled, the XML feed for your forum can be found at: https://www.eclipse.org/forums/feed.php The feed has three modes of operation. You can specify the mode by passing the 'mode' parameter via GET to the feed script. The support modes are 'u', for user information retrieval, 't' for topic retrieval and 'm' for message retrieval. Each mode has a number of options that allow you to specify the exact nature of the data you wish to fetch. Below is the explanation of those flags, it should be noted that flags are not exclusive and you can use as many as you like in a single request. A fully functional parser of the FUDforum RDF can be found at: /home/data/httpd/writable/www.eclipse.org/fudforum/scripts/rdf_parser.php 'm' mode (messages) ------------------- cat Only retrieve messages from category with this id. frm Only retrieve messages from forum with this id. th Only retrieve messages from topic with this id. id Retrieve a single message with the specified id. ds Only retrieve messages posted after the specified date (unix timestamp). de Only retrieve messages posted before the specified date (unix timestamp). n Fetch no more then n messages (cannot be higher then overall maximum). o Starting offset from which to begin fetching messages. l Order messages from newest to oldest. sf Subscribed forums based on user id. st Subscribed topics based on user id. basic Output basic data parse-able by most RDF parsers (only when format=rdf). format Output format: RDF (default), ATOM or RSS. 't' mode (topics) ----------------- cat Only retrieve topics from category with this id. frm Only retrieve topics from forum with this id. id Retrieve a single topic with the specified id. ds Only retrieve topics where the last message was posted after the specified date (unix timestamp). de Only retrieve topics where the last message was posted before the specified date (unix timestamp). n Fetch no more then n topics (cannot be higher then overall maximum). o Starting offset from which to begin fetching topics. l Order topics from newest to oldest. format Output format: RDF (default), ATOM or RSS. Examples: --------- Fetch the 10 most recent messages from your forum and format it as an RDF feed: https://www.eclipse.org/forums/feed.php?mode=m&l=1&n=10 Fetch the 15 most recent topics from your forum and format it as an ATOM feed: https://www.eclipse.org/forums/feed.php?mode=t&l=1&n=15&format=atom Fetch the 20 most recent topics from the first forum and format it as a RSS2 feed: https://www.eclipse.org/forums/feed.php?mode=t&l=1&n=20&frm=1&format=rss
Thanks Eric, that did the trick. One plus about this is I know longer have to worry about my HTML posts being mangled and can post pictures knowing how they will look for the receiver. :-)
I really appreciate everyone's willingness to try the forums out. It's far from perfect, so many thanks.
For me the biggest issue is monitoring incoming questions. A feed helps address that reasonably. Perhaps filtered mail would have done the trick too, but I also get endless GSoc mail that often doesn't get filtered properly/right away, and I definitely don't want more of that. Posting answers is definitely less convenient, but knowing some horrible bridge won't butcher my post helps make that seem not so hard to swallow. And of course, like everyone else, I appreciate that the web master's team has limited resources and could invest those in any number of very useful ways. A better composer for the forum Q&A would benefit everyone...
Is there a way to add a signature in FudForum? I found the checkbox "Use Signature by Default:" but not how to set this signature.
(In reply to Laurent Redor from comment #76) > Is there a way to add a signature in FudForum? I found the checkbox "Use > Signature by Default:" but not how to set this signature. Let's not hijack this bug report with other forum-related topics. To answer the question: signatures are currently disabled because more often than not they were used by spammers or ordinary users to drive traffic to external sites. We try to eliminate any temptation for link-spam that we can. If the community wants signatures we could consider it, but have to balance that (minor) feature against the spam problem.
(In reply to Eric Rizzo from comment #77) > (In reply to Laurent Redor from comment #76) > > Is there a way to add a signature in FudForum? I found the checkbox "Use > > Signature by Default:" but not how to set this signature. > > Let's not hijack this bug report with other forum-related topics. It's a question, like many others recently in this issue, on how to replace NNTP with the use of FUDForum. But thanks for your response.
Copying Russ Bateman, another prominent forums answerer who I think uses NNTP.
(In reply to Markus Kuppe from comment #1) > If NNTP has to go, why not convert everything to (open) mailinglists? That > way there would only be a single channel. And E-Mail is definitely not > aging. :) For me that's the alternative, I wonder why noone else mentioned that. You have all the -dev lists. Why not -user lists too then? Really for example for jdt/emf/platform I see no reason why a forum would be better than a mailing list. Tou'd get immediately rid of half the people posting java questions on jdt and installation problems on platform. I'm on several of the eclipse groups, and got notice of this bug just yesterday on the org.eclipse.sirius group. I don't think notices of any kind went out in the other groups. Where should I subscribe to get noticed of such things earlier? I don't like to arrive late at these parties :) About polarsys: I always thought it sucked that it didn't have NNTP available, so not all folks on polarsys are happy without it. Get along? Sure, but polarsys is almost no-traffic, so I wouldn't say that if polarsys can do without eclipse can too.
Perhaps the webmaster (or someone) should post to all forums a note about NNTP being shutdown, making sure that such a post is actually posted to NNTP so that NNTP users are warned (with one day notice at this point). The most should also include a link to the forum so that users know where to go from now on. Perhaps a link to this bug should be included so they know how they can configure the use of feeds for monitoring the forum, if they don't want to do that via the web interface for the forum.
> Perhaps the webmaster (or someone) should post to all forums a note about > NNTP being shutdown, making sure that such a post is actually posted to NNTP That is a challenge since the bridge is actually broken. I'll leave NNTP on for a few weeks, with a Denied message that indicates to use forums.
> I'll leave NNTP on for a few weeks, with a Denied message that indicates to > use forums. I can't set a "denied" message... But I've set all newsgroups to read-only. Need to remove the [nntp] links from https://www.eclipse.org/forums/
I don't see any messages on my subscribed newsgroups instructing users to migrate to the corresponding forum.
How about a bulk post with http://perldoc.perl.org/Net/NNTP.html to all groups?
Done... I used good old netcat and talked nntp directly. https://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php/t/1080725/
Sigh, would have been nice if a page were created to suggest alternatives to just using the forum. I mainly use it in a RO mode so if I could look at an RSS feed then go and click on the link in RSS to enter the forum to post when needed that would be a way to have an easier way to follow new posts. I HATE with a passion having to open and poke through a bunch of web pages to find whats new. most forum software has poor (relative to NNTP) tracking of READ/UNREAD posts.
(In reply to Bill Trautman from comment #87) > Sigh, would have been nice if a page were created to suggest alternatives to > just using the forum. I mainly use it in a RO mode so if I could look at an > RSS feed then go and click on the link in RSS to enter the forum to post > when needed that would be a way to have an easier way to follow new posts. > I HATE with a passion having to open and poke through a bunch of web pages > to find whats new. most forum software has poor (relative to NNTP) tracking > of READ/UNREAD posts. See comment #63 and comment #72
(In reply to Bill Trautman from comment #87) > Sigh, would have been nice if a page were created to suggest alternatives to > just using the forum. I mainly use it in a RO mode so if I could look at an > RSS feed then go and click on the link in RSS to enter the forum to post > when needed that would be a way to have an easier way to follow new posts. > I HATE with a passion having to open and poke through a bunch of web pages > to find whats new. most forum software has poor (relative to NNTP) tracking > of READ/UNREAD posts. RSS is actually well supported by the forum. See comment #63 and comment #72
I agree, a wiki page or some page explaining the deprecation and shut-down of NNTP with alternatives/replacements would be really useful. On a side note, will the old NNTP data stay available as html/web archive (indexed by search engines)?
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #86) > Done... I used good old netcat and talked nntp directly. Now that NNTP is dead and so NNTP compatibility is no longer an issue, can we please give some high priority to replacing FUDForum by something much more useable?
Just one remaining thought on the deprecation of the old NTTP mechansim. I would like to suggest we get rid of a yet older form of communication in the community.... smtp why keep this old form of communication around either ;-) Forgive the humor but I had to...
-1 This sucks. NNTP was designed from the ground up for newsgroups. Nothing comes close to Thunderbird NNTP client for tracking and managing changes on newsgroup threads, integration with email, etc. If the problem is resources for managing bi-directional integration between NNTP and the forum, isn't that solvable?
-1 I used Thunderbird NNTP client, and the whole reason why I did not ask many questions in the past was that most things were already answered before (quite often by Ed, btw). I found these answers even offline in my Thunderbird cache (offline = fast). PS I just wanted to test the search feature of the web forum, but unfortunately the forum cannot be reached at the moment I'm writing this... PPS I can still search using Thunderbird :-)
NNTP shutdown message sent, server is shut off, removed rules from the ASA and DNS entry pending removal. name 198.41.30.194 news access-list OUTSIDE extended permit tcp any host news eq www access-list OUTSIDE extended permit tcp any host news eq nntp static (inside,outside) news news netmask 255.255.255.255 tcp 1000 100 Derek, can you remove the Nagios rule? We're done here. So long NNTP, ye served us well.
News/NNTP Nagios rule removed.
Great, thanks.
(In reply to Denis Roy from comment #74) > I really appreciate everyone's willingness to try the forums out. It's far > from perfect, so many thanks. Indeed. FUDForum really sucks. I regularly lose draft messages as I investigate added content. I regularly overlook attachments that the RSS notification strips. (In reply to Ed Willink from comment #91) > Now that NNTP is dead and so NNTP compatibility is no longer an issue, can > we please give some high priority to replacing FUDForum by something much > more useable? When do we plan to move on?
It often takes as long as 30 seconds for a post to get posted, which is why we often see duplicates because the feedback while processing is poor, and yes, I too have lost posts... Even worse, it seems to me that forum traffic has dramatically dropped since turning off NNTP. The newcomers forum used to have posts pretty much every day and now there are days with no posts. Was there any data to back up the assumption that the people asking questions mostly used the rather horrible web forum? Is there any data to contradict my personal observation that traffic is down?
Created attachment 265156 [details] weekly nb authors in newcomers forum I have a bit of data and charts around, I'm attaching the number of distinct authors for the newcomers forum in the last 60 weeks (one curve show the raw values, the other is fitted to see the tendency) Seems you are right the "Newcomer" forum got a drop which started (sort of) near the end of september.
Created attachment 265157 [details] weekly nb authors in sirius+xtext+emf forums If you look at some fairly active Eclipse projects (other attachment) it seems like there is no such drop (one could assume the community there is already used to this channel ?)
After such lively discussion about shutting down NNTP, I wonder why there seems to be so little activity in setting up some alternative to the current forum, e.g. at https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=437064 Maybe people should at least vote for the bug if they dislike the current forum (like me)?
> After such lively discussion about shutting down NNTP, I wonder why there > seems to be so little activity in setting up some alternative to the current > forum, e.g. at https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=437064 We simply don't have the resources for that right now, but will visit the issue as soon as we can.
See Bug 513124 for unreliable RSS feeds.
> > I know there are many die-hard NNTP fans out there, but considering the > issues, is it time we consider deprecating NNTP to focus on more modern ways > of communicating? Agreed. TCP/IP is 45 years old. Let's shut the whole internet down.
