Dwelve into online messages communications worth using.
Online communication
There are four means of online message communication, that is worth considering. These are email, netnews, XMPP, and IRC. In this post I will introduce them.
We all know what email is. I consider email as personal email messages, and also as public email messages sent to (or received by) discussion lists or by newsletters. So it is a big spectrum.
With email, you can talk privately to one person, or to as many people as you like.
The difference between discussion list and newsletters, is that everyone in discussion lists are able to post messages to that discussion list; in a newsletter, only one entity/person is able to post messages to that newsletter. Discussion lists are more democratic than newsletters.
Discussion lists servers (and also newsletters servers) don’t communicate with each other. They are isolated islands.
Personal email messages are semi-public. I say personal email messages are semi-public instead of semi-private because, as of today, new legislation and some email service’s policies disrespect the established Fundamental Right of respect for correspondence.
In order for you to make personal email messages be private, you can use end-to-end ciphering (end-to-end encryption), such as using GnuPG (an PGP implementation).
Netnews
Netnews is very similar to personal email messages. But in netnews, all your messages are to the public, kinda similar to discussion lists in functionality.
The difference between netnews and discussion lists, is that netnews servers talk between each other. So when you publish as netnews, that message (called as “news”) is replicated to each netnews server your netnews server connects to. You, with an account on a specific netnews server, are able to communicate with others that are on another netnews server.
Netnews is composed by many newsgroups, which are kinda like channels that refer to a specific area of interest in life. Few newsgroups are to the server only, and these few newsgroups won’t be replicated to other servers.
XMPP
XMPP is an instant messenger (a chat) where you can chat to any person. Even if the person has an account on other XMPP server.
You can talk to a person privately, or join a groupchat and talk to that group of people.
IRC
IRC is also a chat. You join a channel and talk to the people on that channel. You also can do a chat to a single person.
IRC servers don’t communicate with each other, they are isolated islands.
Conclusion
| Communication | Type | Can talk one-to-one? | Can talk to multiple people? | Can talk to other servers? | Works on every operating system |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal email | Can be private | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Discussion list | Public | Yes, with email address. | Yes | No | Yes |
| Newsletter | Public | Only to the admin, with email. | Not as a subscriber. | No | Yes |
| Netnews | Public | Yes, with email address. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| XMPP | Can be private | Yes | Yes, with groupchats. | Yes | Yes |
| IRC | Public | Yes | Yes, with channels. | No | Yes |
Table 0: Message Communication classification
In “Type” column, when I say “Can be private”, means that by default it is not private, it is semi-public; but it is capable of end-to-end ciphering (end-to-end encryption) making it private communication.
Note
If you want a program that sends messages to all of these, install GNU Emacs and take your time in learning it. You can grow much further up, if you dedicate your time to knowing how to use GNU Emacs.
