[Wikipedia-l] BBS vs mailing list (was Re: Moderator nominations)

[Brion Vibber]

On Wed, 2002-12-11 at 14:55, The Cunctator wrote:
> On Wed, 2002-12-11 at 17:45, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > On Wed, 2002-12-11 at 14:36, The Cunctator wrote:
> > > At least 90% of our problems would be solved, without adding hierarchies
> > > and censorship, if we just moved to a bulletin board system.
> > 
> > What are the problems that this would solve, and how would it solve
> > them?
> > 
> It would solve the basic scaling problems 
> * the problem of flooded inboxes

Present solution: Filter your mailbox; put lists in their own folders.
(But not everyone has a mailreader that does filtering, or knows how to
set it up if they do.)

> * the problem of lack of threading

Present solution: Use a threaded mailreader.
(But not everyone has a mailreader that does threading, or knows has to
turn it on if they do.)

> * the problem of ephemerality of content (by making it easy to refer to
> earlier threads)

Present solution: Hyperlink to the archives on the web; most mailreaders
these days will let you click on a URL.
(But it's harder to reply to the original post; it's hard to search the
archives; URLs are long.)

> These scaling problems underlie the current tensions causing the
> upswells of conflict on the lists.
> 
> If the bbs were integrated with the Wikipedia system (that is, it
> recognized users and/or allowed people to make wiki links) it would
> solve
> * the problem of obscurity and 

Not sure what you mean here -- perhaps easier ability to link from
Wikipedia pages to particular threads in the bbs? How so?

> * the problem of not being able to link directly to [[Wikipedia]]

Now, that _would_ be nice.

> * the problem of not being able to coordinate Talk page discussion with
> list-based discussions

I'm not sure how the bbs helps here. It's trivial to include a URL to a
talk page in a list message, and URLs to bbs threads are about as
obscure as URLs to the mailing list archive.

A web board is also inimical to offline reading (as is the 'pedia, at
present) and doesn't integrate well with people who have an organized
way to deal with massive amounts of e-mail. Possible solution:
smtp<->bbs or nntp<->bbs gateway.

There's some potential here though; feel free to set up a page on meta
with some specific proposals.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)