Re: What platform do you use for this community list server?

Separate “community server” from “email list” and you begin to understand
why we’ve been working on the HIE of One Trustee(r) project as
self-sovereign individuals in self-sovereign communities.

Self-hosting any server, not just an email server, is a bad user
experience. Therefore, the community should:
- be paid for hosting, customer support, moderation, data brokerage
- compete for individuals as members (no lock-in)
- identify members by either email, mobile number or DID
- process requests in a standardized way
- issue authorization tokens in a standardized way

Although our chosen example is communities of patients with a shared
interest around health records, another example could be running a list.

A focus on the standards issues that are relevant to self-sovereign
individuals choosing among self-sovereign communities is different than the
general focus of CCG and related groups which seem to serve issuer and
verifier business interest. This has effectively driven me out of live
participation in CCG and related protocol WGs.

Now that IETF GNAP is stable to meet much of the needed protocol for
interacting with a self-sovereign Trustee as an agent of the individual, my
standards focus has shifted to chartering a new IETF workgroup for the
remaining aspects of presenting VCs as part of a (GNAP) request to an
easily substitutable (by any individual member) hosting and support
community. Please contact me if you would like to join a Signal group to
help start the IETF work. And, of course, there’s IIW in about a month.

Adrian

On Wed, Sep 6, 2023 at 12:31 AM Christopher Allen <
ChristopherA@lifewithalacrity.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 5, 2023 at 9:16 PM steve capell <steve.capell@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Slightly left field question.  I’m looking for a simple email list
>> service where
>>
>>    - Anyone can apply to join the list without creating new accounts (so
>>    not google groups)
>>    - One or more moderates allow new list members.  They can have any
>>    email address
>>    - Anyone in the group can post to the group and can see the
>>    conversations in the group.
>>
>> This seems surprisingly hard to find. All my searches come back with
>> email marketing platforms like mail chimp which is a way to broadcast spam
>> not a way for community members to collaborate as peers. I thought google
>> groups would do nicely but, although it allows members to bring their own
>> email address, they still have to create a google account - which is an
>> unreasonable ask for someone that just wants to join a mailing list and not
>> create new accounts on platforms.
>>
>> I’m old enough to remember the early days of the web when email list
>> servers were everywhere.  Just like this CCG list manager….
>>
>> Any hints?
>>
>
> I’ve been hunting around for a while for the same, tried a few services
> and some newer self-hosted tools. But no luck.
>
> Unfortunately, as smtp has become re-centralized by the powers-that-be (in
> particular Google, Apple, Microsoft) the self-hosted solutions are largely
> dead. Basically any self-hosted lists will be over-filtered as spam unless
> you regularly go through hoops (and again, and again). Sometimes your mails
> aren’t even marked as spam, just silently filtered as “not important”.
>
> Instead you need to find a paid service who will go through the hoops. As
> you noted, even those are more focused on other business models
> (newsletters and marketing) rather than community support. Or email is a
> barely working feature of their web service.
>
> We tried Google lists (which were decent for a while) and they have become
> terrible even if you accept their requirements.
>
> Let me know if you find something I missed.
>
> — Christopher Allen
>
>>