On Jan 1, 2008 1:52 PM, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
On 28/12/2007, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
A good idea, UC; forums are usually better at threaded conversation and
it is much easier to correct things when folks go off-topic.
A bad idea. Forums are manifestly inferior to email, which can be read from anywhere using a number of methods, instead of having to go to a site and use some hateful forum software. Not that I feel the need to post here often, but it offers more value than any forum can. I certainly won't be joining.
I think the biggest advantage of email lists is that I can access all of them in one place. I'm subscribed to about a dozen different mailing lists which I can access all at once under the "mailing lists" label in gmail. So I get threads from Larry Sanger's SharedKnowing mailing list (http://mail.citizendium.org/mailman/listinfo/sharedknowing) mixed with threads from the Tor mailing list or-talk (http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/) mixed with threads from the Tampa linux user group (http://slug.archives.nks.net/List/) mixed with threads from the OpenStreetMap mailing list, etc. I can search all of these from one location, no one can delete messages on them out from under me, I find it very convenient. If I want to read one of the mailing lists individually I can do that too, but I pretty much never do this. I guess some people wouldn't like this, but for me it's almost essential.
When Citizendium switched their mailing list to forums and made their mailing list announce-only, my participation fell off dramatically. I've recently tried setting up their forums to send me an email whenever a new thread on the forums is started, but it isn't working very well. Gmail doesn't thread it properly, I have to mark each thread I want to follow separately, I lose the messages between the first and whenever I marked the thread. It doesn't work.
In theory there should be a way to get the best of both worlds, though. Just let me set a flag on the forum to send me an email every time a message is added, properly titled and referenced for any email program which handles threading, and let me reply to the messages by email (and pick up the references or whatever in the email header to direct the message to the right spot in the forums).