[Rubyinstaller-devel] Making it Easy To Contribute

[Jon]

> How exactly is a Goolgle Group an improvement over a Rubyforge mailing list?
> 
> You still have to create an account to join, and I don't even see the
> option to join with a non-Gmail address.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Michal

For me, Google Groups makes me much more efficient in that I have a single place to go to manage the multiple mailing lists I'm interested in.

It's so easy to sign in, click on "My Groups", see a summary of the new items with a link to the web interface for the group.  I can also go to "Manage my memberships" and change a few things with the most important being simply selecting via a dropdown on how I get notified via email or unsubscribe.

<aside>
I don't often use the group web intfc and primarily use http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ on my Windows machines to filter these email messages from a single Gmail account into multiple folders.  It's a really, really, really lightweight and cool email client for Windows.  It can even be visually themed via "gtkrc" to look really un-Windows battleship grey like :)
</aside>

Contrast this with the monkey dance that occurs with other lists in which you have to send a message (containing specific "commands" that you've likely forgotten) to a specific "control" mail address (that you've likely forgotten).  More than once, I've forgotten the specifics and had to search for the control mail address and then send it a "help" message to find out commands to do things like temporarily stop receiving emails, etc.  Waste of time.

I find the Google Group experience much more convenient in addition to arguably being more visible, more searchable, etc.

While I don't know how big an issue it is for you to get/use a Google account, I really think that once you use Google Groups you'll find it's more respectful of your time.  Not without its warts of course, but I think a huge step forward.

Jon