ikiwiki/doc/todo/provide_a_mailing_list.mdwn

I am aware that you (Joey) [[made_a_choice_against_a_mailing_list|contact]],
but I would like to see you reconsider.

The wiki works well for bugs and
collaborating on the software, but not for simple user support issues. For
instance, I spent the last three days waiting for any form of reply to my
question on IRC (none so far):

    09 15:49 < madduck> any ideas how to implement a two-level menu
    09 15:40 < madduck> like http://www.abacons.ch/leistungen/treuhand.html ?
    09 15:50 < madduck> the top bar are the main sections
    09 15:50 < madduck> and then i might need subsections (further down) under each
    09 15:50 < madduck> i'd like to do this without hardcoding sections in the template
    09 15:50 < madduck> but at least the main sections are to appear on all pages
    09 15:50 < madduck> so the template needs a slot, i just wonder how best to fill it
    09 15:51 < madduck> i can only ever use one navbar it seems
    09 15:51 < madduck> and i already need the sidebar for something else

I would not know where to take this question on the wiki itself.

A mailing list is made for these kind of questions, and as we pick up even
more users, the number of such requests will also increase. --[[madduck]]

> I wouldn't mind a mailing list myself. For many people, e-mail is more
> efficient to process, particularly offline, than wiki pages. Also,
> ikiwiki's discussion pages require a fair amount of discipline from
> users to make it easy to follow a long discussion. On the other hand,
> it would be interesting to make improvements to ikiwiki
> (read: plugins) to to see if it's possible to accomodate both
> mail people and online people.
> --[liw](http://liw.fi)

>> The [Zwiki](http://zwiki.org) project has ideas to mine in this area. We explored various permutations of wiki and mail list.
>> Currently Zwiki's [email features](http://zwiki.org/Mail) are good enough that we use it as the mail list and don't run separate
>> ml software. This is simple and mostly satisfying. Now and then we miss the familiarity and industrial
>> strength of a standard mail list and its simple time-based archive. We do gateway with [gmane](http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.zope.zwiki) so people 
>> can use that as an alternative. I'm happy to chat about this, ping me..
>> --[sm](http://joyful.com)

[[!tag wishlist]]