For folks not that used to web interfaces, the openSUSE Forums team provides a secondary interface to our forums – NNTP. The intention of this post is to raise your attention on this possibility.
What is NNTP?
Using our NNTP interface, you’re able to participate in forums discussions without accessing the web interface at all. You’re able to use any newsreader supporting the RFC standard to read and even write posts. Actually your user-id gets recognized in the web interface if you set up your newsreader properly.
From my personal experience especially developers are in general more familiar in using mailing lists instead of browsing a web interface. One of our desires is to get more developers to the board. On the one hand, developers can provide competent assistance especially to our new users – on the other hand, the forums are able to provide a lot of feedback back to developers. The advantages are obvious!
The NNTP interface to the forums provides a neat way to browse significantly more content with less effort. You can get a quick overview about forums content using NNTP. Certainly you’ll not be able to see the great template created by Robert Lihm, but every choice has its drawback – Good to have a choice at least, isn’t it?
For detailed instructions on how to set up your newsreader properly to participate in forums discussions, be sure to check out the NNTP section within our forums FAQ.
We’re really looking forward to your contribution!
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Hi!
I believe that’s a great idea (though I don’t use openSuSE so won’t be using that for the time being).
Honestly I’m surprised more people haven’t thought of that yet.
IMO, if mailing lists and news servers could be interconnected would be even better. It’d allow for non regulars to follow mailing lists when they had the time and when they didn’t, they wouldn’t be drowned by the thousands of messages mailing lists get (mail filters are great but you still have to download messages you won’t ever read unless you have the trouble to unsubscribe…). That would also require a proper archive online, probably browsable by a Web browser.
Anyway, great idea 🙂
P.S.: though some kind of secure NNTP if possible would be better?
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Pedro
>though some kind of secure NNTP if possible would be better?
Pedro,
Our goal is to make the openSUSE forums easily accessible to everyone so an open server is the best option. There’s really not much reason to have an NNTP server secure as you don’t have to enter any private data into your NNTP client. A good reference for you is in the Forum FAQ regarding securing personal information and the use of the NNTP interface.
>Honestly I’m surprised more people haven’t thought of that yet.
SSsshhhh! or before long EVERYONE will be doing it! 🙂
Ya you’re right, I was thinking in a broader context which would need a redefined protocol: you’d for example register at a Webpage which would have Webbased access to a mailing list and its archives. You could participate in the mailing list by three processes: subscribe by mail, by news reader or with a browser. You would need an secure protocol to authenticate with the news server with your login and password.
On the other hand: “If you prefer not to have your real email address in your newsreader, you can use the following syntax for an email address in your newsreader: userid@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org and your user will still be recognized.” will probably work better ^^ using an “old” and stable protocol 😛
Ok now I feel dumb, I found out gmane allows access to mailing lists as newsgroup…
Still, allowing that to a Webforum is something new 🙂
Rupert,
thanks a lot. NNTP access to the forums is stupendous.
Peter
Peter,
glad you like it. Thanks a lot for participating!