[Web Comm] RE: login / mailing lists

[Tyler Mitchell]

On 18-Jul-06, at 4:16 AM, Auke Jilderda wrote:

> Indeed, this seems to be a fairly ugly hack in the web interface.  I
> would suggest we remove the hack altogether.  I would think it is  
> clear
> enough for people that they need to register and log in before they  
> can
> subscribe to the lists?  Jason, what do you think?

I was actually quite confused the first few times I went to subscribe  
to mailing lists and couldn't find the subscribe button/link.  It  
made no sense to me why I had to register and login to be able to  
subscribe.

Since then, I've caught on and I see that subscriptions can all be  
handled directly through email.  It's actually a pain for those who  
are not registered but want to follow mailing list discussions (i.e.  
to consider whether they really want to join/register).  I can't just  
email them a URL and say, go here to subscribe.  I'm afraid we may  
have a whole bunch of people who casually registered just to get  
access to mailing list subscription tools, yet have no more interest  
in OSGeo than than.  So, I don't put any stock in our number of  
registered members.

All that to say I don't understand why there is the registration  
requirement, apart from putting a small barrier for spammers and  
bots.  I see most other sites don't have this requirement, i.e.  
http://support.openoffice.org/index.html.

Tyler