On Fri, 3 Feb 2006 12:25, Scott M Stolz wrote: > > > On 1/26/06, Alex Fisher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > It will also result in quite a few current readers of this list no > > > > longer being able to follow discussions. There are quite a few who > > > > detest the forum format (I'm one - I fond them clunky and very > > > > difficult to use, and invariability very slow - Email has > > > > disadvantages, but IMO fora have even more. > > The problem is that an e-mail list also prevents a lot of people from > participating in discussions. I really dislike e-mail discussion > lists and only subscribe to them if there is no other choice. I > prefer forums much better because my e-mail box does not get cluttered > up with thousands of discussion messages.
Well, I participate in about 20 email lists, apart from the OO.o lists (where I have around 15 currnetly active lists), and the most messages I've had in one day (including spam) is 150. How anyone gets "thousands" of emails in one day from mailing lists is beyond me > With a forum, I go in when > I want, and only when I want, view the discussions I want, and only > receive e-mail notifications of topics I want. I don't have to > subscribe to the entire website; I can subscribe to specific threads > only if I want to. > > In a nutshell, forums give the user MUCH more control over how they > participate in discussions than an e-mail list which sends every > single topic to your e-mail. It would seem that many have either absolutely useless email clients, or they have never configured filters. Each and every list I subscribe to has its own folder. Each and every list has a filter on the mailing list itself (a decent email client will give the option of "Create filter on Mailing list"), so all incoming mail is automatically sorted according to which list it is from. If I decide I don't want/need to check this (or any other list), I simply don't enter that folder. When I do check, all the posts are sorted in threads, all new messages are in a different colour, and the threads are shown in a separate window. It is a very simple matter to scan the threads and new messages, decide what (if any) messages I wish to read, read them and then mark all the rest as read. If there is a thread I don't wish to follow, then I simply mark it "Ignore this Thread", and that is that. My email client is set to check for new mail every 5 minutes, so all new posts are there, for me to read or not, as and when I choose. It means a more immediate response when needed, something which I've yet to see with forums, (unless you remain logged in constantly), and in fact gives me everything that you list as the supposed advantages of a forum, without the need to log in to read the responses to my questions. My suspicion is that the majority of those who complain about mailing lists simply haven't a decent email client, or they haven't configured it adequately. A good client will also interface properly with various anti-spam tools (such as Spamassassin), which once configured and trained adequately will trap over 90% of spam (which is of course filtered into its own folder). I think you should be able to understand just why I find it so hard to comprehend the complaints about mailing lists in general. Everything that has been put forward as an objection to them I've found to be unfounded, at least based on my personal experiences. Why is it that so many of us have none of the problems that others claim to be having? What is the difference? > Even in digest form, its annoying. Forget digests. They are the most useless thing yet developed for mailing lists (particularly the way the OO.o lists do them). Individual emails are considerably easier to manage, again based on my personal experience.... > With > an e-mail discussion list, you have to sort through ALL the > discussions to find what you want, No, you only have to glance at the list of subject lines and senders... > with a forum, you read only what > you want to read. With properly configured email clients and filters, you only need read the mails you want, with no need to wait for a web page to load, and no need to scroll through the entire thread or do a search search to view one specific person's posts. > Plus you can search a forum saving you time. Scanning a list of subject lines and senders is faster than any web-based search. And a decent email client usually has a search bar above the list of messages, and by entering a phrase in there it usually (Mine does) sorts on the fly. I've never had to enter the full search term (for example, to find all posts from you I would start typing your name or email address in the box . By the time I had "sco" in there, only those threads which you had posted to would be shown. I could further filter by message status (read, new or unread). Much faster than logging in, waiting for the page to load, entering the search term. waiting for the page to load, realizing that the search needs refining, waiting for the page to load.... And for those using dial-up it's even slower > > For some, e-mail discussion lists are better, but for many, a modern > forum is much much better. Don't get me wrong, Forums have their place. I just can't see how, for our purposes, they offer any significant advantages. In fact, as I pointed out above, there are some significant disadvantages... I've used forums for a number of purposes, mainly for finding information (that's how, for example, I researched the broadband suppliers here and decided which one to sign up with. Worked well, since i didn't need any immediate responses, and a lot of the info was already there). I'll continue to use forums when they are the most useful option.... > > Scott M. Stolz > http://www.wistex.com/ -- Alex Fisher Co-Lead, CD-ROM Project OpenOffice.org Marketing Community Contact Australia/New Zealand http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
