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I think that you should set up a NNTP for NESdev

Posted: Sun Oct 27, 2019 4:36 pm
by zzo38
I think that NNTP is much better than web forum and mailing list (and IRC is better than Discord); however, you could also have multiple interfaces to the same messages if wanted (although, when posting messages by NNTP you must ensure that the message ID and other stuff is not mangled by doing so).

You could either use a separate database for a web forum (then my "sqlnetnews" software will be usable), or use the same database (in this case, extra columns will be needed to retain data not already used by the web interface, and you can't use "sqlnetnews" software because SQLite does not support the use of incremental blob I/O with virtual tables). Another thing that makes it difficult to work is that there does not seem to be any MIME type defined for bbcode.

I also wrote a Unusenet document, which specifies a format for newsgroup names that are not part of Usenet (there are many cases; one is to use "un" and a number of domain name parts and dot and the reverse domain name, followed by the rest of the news group name, e.g. un2.org.zzo38computer.admin), and also some new header fields, such as From-RDF which is a URL of a RDF file with more information about the user.

Re: I think that you should set up a NNTP for NESdev

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 10:42 am
by Nioreh
Sounds archaic. What would make it better than this forum?

Re: I think that you should set up a NNTP for NESdev

Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 7:37 am
by nesrocks
What is NNTP?

Re: I think that you should set up a NNTP for NESdev

Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 7:43 am
by tepples
Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is the Internet protocol that Usenet servers use.

Re: I think that you should set up a NNTP for NESdev

Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 8:02 am
by nesrocks
What I mean is, in practical terms how would it differ to a web forum?

Re: I think that you should set up a NNTP for NESdev

Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 8:29 am
by tepples
I can think of a few differences:
  • Like email, NNTP offers a workflow of download all new posts, go offline, compose replies, go back online, send replies. This helps people who have only an intermittent Internet connection, such as a laptop user away from home without a subscription to mobile hotspot service.
  • NNTP offers threaded discussions. This means each reply is to another post, not to the topic. It might fit better with the culture here that has embraced digressions.
  • An NNTP client can run with much less CPU and RAM use than a modern web browser. This improves usability on old or mobile computing hardware.
  • NNTP omits client-side scripting. This gives users peace of mind that server operators lack a way to to engage in the sort of third-party client-side surveillance that websites' analytics and advertising scripts routinely perform in the 2010s.