I am not much impressed by Forum > Email gateways. I've used one quite a bit on the OLPC forums that OSUOSL set up for us ~18 months ago. It works alright, but I think the mechanism is wrong.
Ultimately what you're dealing with is a cultural shift if you make a decision between forums and a mailing list. You have very different interaction types and cultures surrounding each. As silly as it sounds, email lists are a significant technical and social-capital barrier to a lot of conversations, as well as being a far less efficient mechanism for spreading the conclusions of conversation. On the other hand email lists are much more flexible, extensible and integrate better into most computer-user's routine. It is possible that splitting the conversation media is more dangerous than choosing the wrong mechanism. But in this case I think that it is better to try to spread Free Culture conversation. FC doesn't have enough presence, and I feel that adding a forum to the sphere of conversation to be a positive thing for the movement as a whole. If the web team is really dedicated to Forum <> Email gateways, drop me a line and I will put you in touch with the OSUOSL people who've set up similar for OLPC. --Seth On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 12:35 PM, flurios <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Kevin Donovan <[email protected]> > wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 7:49 AM, Rob Myers <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Christian Pfaab <[email protected]> > >> wrote: > >> > > >> > personally I do not like forums. > >> > >> I can't stand them. One online community I was a member of (Rhizome) > >> was destroyed by the switch from mailing list to forum. > > There are plenty of vibrant, dynamic forums on the interwebs. There is no > > inherent reason blocking SFC from having one, too. And given what seems > like > > widespread support of a forum, it is worth at least trying it out for a > bit. > > > I wouldn't support a forum which isn't directly connected to the > mailinglist... because it just would be another media to keep > checking^^ > > how about a news server? :> > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss >
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