On 24 Dec 2013 at 20:06, Raymond Burkholder wrote: > > Subject: [cryptography] Can we move to a forum, please? > > Thoughts? > > If this moved to a forum, I'd probably not read it. I receive messages > from > many different services, and if I had to remember to go online to read > messages, it wouldn't happen.
I agree -- I don't have the time or care to go visit dozens of websites each day, just to check if there's any activity in THIS forum or THAT one. I find it very convenient having it all come to me. > With the current system, messages appear in my inbox with messages > from > other list exchanges. It provides a simple central mechanism for > reading > and responding to the various messages I receive. Also, for me, I'm on many mailing lists that are *related* and I sort those into _single_ folders. So all of my 'security' stuff goes into one place, all of the 'craft/hobby' lists are collected in a separate place, etc. The fact that there are six hobby lists is irrelevant: they all end up just in my 'hobby' folder -- I don't have to visit six sites. In fact, this is a case in point: there are two cryptography lists that are similar but different. I filter them both into the same folder [and my only quandry is if I want to post I need to pick "to which", but I never have to do anything to follow both effortlessly]. > On the other hand, if the forum emailed messages with a 'reply link' > as > messages are posted, that would be an acceptable alternative. Not quite: Most forums postings don't any context -- they just expect that their post will "follow next" in the forum [even when that's not true!] and so they just type away. So if you get just an email message, it'll be VERY cryptic trying to piece together what's going on, especially if a single topic has two discussion threads interweaving within in. I haven't seen a forum that lets you "save" messages -- if the new PHPbb does that'd be great. PHPbb has never been very good at keeping track of what you've seen and what you haven't: if you visit the forum and only read some of the new posts, you generally won't get a second [easy] chance to find it [there's no mechanism I've seen for the equivalent of leaving something unread in your list-folder to be dealt with later]. Do forums let you 'print' messages? Can you 'forward' messages? Can you 'save/archive' threads that are particularly interesting? I happen to not much like the format of most online forums.... other folk love them. I'm not impressed with 'BBcodes' and the few-score emoticons it allows. I know some peolple really like that, but not me. My vote is to stay as an email list. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:ber...@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
