Subject: Re: [Asrg] Changing mailing lists from push to pull

From: Scott Nelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 May 2003 10:25:10 -0700

At 10:58 PM 4/30/03 -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
>  It should possible to set up a script to make a PC (Windows/Max/Linux)
>poll a POP server once a day or once a week, etc.  Has anyone ever tried
>writing up a script and simply throwing announcements on a central POP
>server.  The subscribers' machine would poll the central POP server as
>required.  This solves the permission problem, because the subscriber is
>doing the pulling.  No changes required to SMTP, for the simple reason
>that SMTP is totally bypassed.
>

I've experimented with many alternative message systems to email,
some of which used pull, though not quite the way you describe.

It's not clear to me that spam goes away just because it's pull,
though it might make it easier to track down the (ir)responsible.
For example, Suppose you got an email that said;
"You have a message from [email-masked] waiting for you at
 http://example.com/bob.message.127".
When go to the web page, it's an ad for wonder widgets.
In that case, I think most would still classify it as spam 
even though you have to go to a web site and "pull" the message.

To put it another way;
What are the benefits of a pull system?
What are are the costs?

Scott Nelson <[email-masked]>
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---

From: Art Pollard <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 May 2003 12:23:10 -0600

>even though you have to go to a web site and "pull" the message.

I wouldn't see the pull mechanism being quite what you describe.  I'd see 
it much more similar to NNTP in how it works from the client.  The client 
would occasionally poll the server and download any new messages that 
originate from that mailing list's server.  The mailing lists server could 
optionally send out a message to the clients on the mailing list letting 
them know that a new message has arrived.  The message would simply be an 
administrative message and not shown to the user.

There are several advantages to this:

1) You subscribed to the mailing list and your client goes out to get the 
messages.  Unsubscribing would simply be a matter of telling your client to 
not picking up the messages any longer.  Mailing lists wouldn't really be a 
subscription like they have in the past where the message is sent to a 
certain subset of people.  Instead, mailing lists would simply be composed 
of those who tell their clients to pick up messages on a regular or 
semi-regular basis.

2) The moderator to the mailing list could remove the messages from the 
message stream fairly easily or even from the archives to prevent off-topic 
or spam messages from being downloaded.  Users could even remove their 
previous posts if they choose given proper authentication.

3) Messages would not have to be picked up frequently or on any regular 
basis.  I get a number of mailing lists that I look at very rarely and only 
use for reference  or for interest (if I have any time to read it.)  It 
would be easy for someone to tell their client to pick up messages once a 
week or once a month if they choose.

-Art

-- 
Art Pollard
http://www.lextek.com/
Suppliers of High Performance Text Retrieval Engines.

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 19:06:11 -0400

> even though you have to go to a web site and "pull" the message.

That's mixing pull w/ push and the push continues to be a problem,
don't do that!

Or, better, if it were to evolve like that one would have some way to
verify that the new msg msg is real and is for something you've
actually signed up for by comparing to your own list.

Otherwise, sure, miscreants could just flood your mailbox with "you
have a message at somewhere.com (Hi Kee)" and you're back where you
started more or less.

I'd think you either poll or maybe "what's new" gets sent via a
protocol other than email, like maybe your own pull "area" which you
give the others you've signed up for permission to leave a "you have
new mail" msg on, and your MUA checks that whenever you fire it up or
ask for it to be checked.

Or maybe you just go to a web site and read the new msgs like a lot of
lists currently, plus or minus improvements in readablity such as
syndicating via RSS/XML so you can use a more sophisticated reader
program than most browsers provide.

I dunno, it's nice to get the newspapers delivered to my house but I
really don't need the guy to knock and knock at 5AM until I come down
and take it from his hands if you get my gist.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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