Proposal: FreeBSD forum2mail archive function

[grarpamp]

Hi.

I am hereby proposing that the FreeBSD forum be extended to provide
a forum2mail archive function.

In short, each post on a certain topic would result in a threaded
email of the same subject line being sent to forum-archive at freebsd.org.
Attachments appear as attachments. Timestamps are dates. From gecos
is users handle, from email is users email, or if not public, just
<handle>@example.com. The different forum sections could be handled
in the subject line, or they could be forum-archive-section at freebsd.org.
Only the content the forum user wrote would be gatewayed. Not their
signature or other forum meta bits related to their post.

If moderation is in place, forum2mail should obviously relay only
moderated posts.

The forum-archive at freebsd.org list will be read-only, at least
initially until such time as a mail2forum gateway is developed. And
it will appear in the cvsup/ftp mirroring tree the same way the
rest of the mailing lists do. Broken down by month, etc. If a
mail2forum gateway is delivered, users may start/reply to forum
threads that way. Till then, if they spot something interesting in
mail, thay can login to the forum and reply that way.

The forum-archive at freebsd.org list can be subscribed to just like
any other list. This allows people to keep up with reading and other
global mail archivers can subscribe to it.


This forum2mail feature is needed for any number of reasons:

- Forums are very heavyweight, database driven, beasts. Lots of
formatting... forum inclusions such as post stats, titles, etc...
user included junk..  taglines, emoticons, etc. The majority of
content in the onscreen presentation is noise, not the signal of
the message itself.
- Various folks prefer email interface for various reasons.
- Forums are notorious for not being archived, mirrored and
indexed for the greater good.
- When forums die, they take their entire font of knowledge with
them.
- Forum search capabilities are quite often lacking. Users may
prefer to use the standard mail search tools to which they are
accustomed.
- Not every user is on forums similar to not every user is on mail.

This simple forum2mail gateway would at least allow the non-forum
users to gain a view into it. And provide a standardized mechanism
for the rest of the world to see it too.

Thank you for your consideration and discussion of this proposal.