Tyler Romeo wrote:
That is not a good comparison whatsoever. There's *no way* I or anybody else has the time or patience to sort through a thousand line plain text file, with automated bot messages, every day just to see if an important conversation was missed. And even if the IRC logs were in some nice pretty format, it's still inconvenient to have to check an additional site. Also, it doesn't allow you to continue the discussion, whereas in the mailing list you can always just reply.
IRC should only be used for what it's specifically made for: realtime chat, i.e., when you need a question answered now or when the delayed email style messaging isn't enough. For anything else that doesn't fit in that category, stick to the mailing list.
Hi.
I think you're only allowed to extol the virtues of mailing lists once you learn to properly post to one. ;-) When you have a free minute, please read and digest https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Mailing_list_etiquette.
A general debate about asynchronous v. synchronous communication methods probably isn't needed here today. Both are hugely valuable to the Wikimedia and MediaWiki communities. And both participants in this conversation seem to be overlooking the canonical form of Wikimedia interpersonal communication: posting to the wiki.
MZMcBride