April, 5, 2003 archives

i know the by-date archiving needs to use the time that the mail actually arrived to the server, or you get the sort of oddities that mailman archives get. by-month, threaded archives don't scale particularly well for busy lists. i'm not a big fan of the ezmlm-cgi-style list of threads with links to the latest post. do you want a single message at a time, or multiple posts from a thread at a time, google news-style? (with frames?) i think there's something to be said for a simple list of the most recent posts, with no threading. (but perhaps sorted with the newest at the top is better?) i think displaying the message thread with each message is a must-have feature. i think doing some intelligent coloring of quoted passages is a really neat feature. so is intelligent handling of attachments. using jwz's threading algorithm is probably a good idea (although i would probably use a database to store the results). obviously encoding or obscuring or omitting email addresses in message headers is a good idea, and it's probably a good thing to do in message bodies, too. being able to get the list of messages from a particular author is a nice feature. closing the loop by making it possible to reply to messages using the web interface could satisfy desires for web-based forums. setting up a nntp server is obviously a good thing to do, too.

(yes, this is obviously a work-related musing. don't get too excited, it's not a high-priority item right now.)

no, not that war. first. second.

still churning through the queue, woody allen's the curse of the jade scorpion was the latest to fall. if i had to give a one-word review, it would have to be eh. i didn't love it, hate it, or even really like or dislike it. it passed the time, and i had a few laughs. i really need to see more of woody allen's earlier films.

an article in the register about google news incorporating press releases into its listings has gotten a little attention. i don't really find much fault with the listing of correctly-attributed press releases. it certainly better than seeing an unattributed (or misattributed) press release on a news site. (here's the original press release from the riaa.)

misattributing a press release (in the register's examples, google news apparently attributed some to yahoo! news) is a pretty big problem. but obviously it is hardly a problem unique to google news. (and clicking through to the actual story makes it a little less of a problem, assuming yahoo! news identifies the piece as a press release.)

it's interesting to think about the intersection of this issue with that of coordinated letters-to-the-editor campaigns. (after all, isn't that just the affiliate-marketed version of a press release? how different is that from areas being blanketed by herbalife signs?)

a common refrain i've heard from anyone i've known who has been interviewed for an article that appeared in print is how they were misquoted, or quoted out of context. as i remember, every single one has then gone on to say how it has made them read other news much more critically. the same goes for people who have witnessed an event, or simply know a lot about a topic of a particular article. i think reading news with a very critical eye is a very good thing. google news is a great tool to use in order to triangulate the truth, and i think its inclusion of (correctly attributed) press releases simply adds to that.

(via jd lasica and jeremy zawodny, where i left related comments.)