On Mon, 2022-10-24 at 11:32 -0300, George N. White III wrote:
> I suspect one reason for the change was the need to combat SPAM and
> DOS attacks.
I noticed comments about spam handling on the mailing lists Patrick
linked (the notion that the web forum was better at rejecting it). I
have to wonder why. Surely it can't just be captchas? I'd hate having
to do those damn things for every post that I did.
I assume CAPTCHA’s are needed to block spambots. I’m less likely to post very simple replies, but for complex posts or when I’m interrupted while writing, the CAPTCHA times out, which is very annoying.
Mailing lists have been getting better at rejecting spam, over the
years. The sign-up processes being a bit better implemented than they
used to be. And some moderate all new user's posts, but that could be
quite a chore, and doesn't help against determined spammers who post
normal interactions for a while, then spam afterwards. (Likewise for
malcontents who post abusive mail, rather than marketing claptrap.)
But if I had to post to this mailing list through a website, I'd leave
immediately. I don't have the time to deal with that inconvenience,
nor the slightest interest in doing so.
> The NASA forum seems to have discouraged all but the most
> serious users
That was an old complaint about Linux mailing lists and newsgroups (put
on your asbestos fireproof pants before daring to post anything, lest
you get flamed alive for saying something dumb).
Both the forums I mention have been remarkably tolerant and generally encouraging towards new users. There is fine line between encouraging new users while also discouraging inefficient approaches to reporting problems.
> but the ESA forum has many users whose previous experience is with
> IOS or Android and who struggle with basic linux concepts, post
> screen captures of text windows, don't provide context, hijack
> threads, etc.
One of the pains of Windows was (and probably still is), that you
couldn't copy and paste text from many of the dialogue boxes (or not
copy something from the part of one that you wanted to).
There are now good OCR tools, so many of my forum replies quote error messages posted as screen captures or photos of the terminal using OCR generated text.
Specialist subjects (e.g. computing) need specialist teachers, and the
course needs to have real purpose. Not faking that you've done
something.
The result is a bunch of graduates who think they are programmers, etc. yet lack basic skills.