I don't really care about which form is used for user support. If passers-by prefer a web-based forum, then this *may* be the better choice. (But also consider that someone has to do the support. These are to a certain degree developers, so even here it's not unimportant what those prefer. Unless we expect users to help themselves, of course.)
But for development the answer is IMHO very clear. Mailing lists are absolutely preferable, and forums are a big annoyance. 1. mail clients are made and optimized for message exchange, while web browsers are made for mere *display* of information. As a consequence, mail clients have decent editors, elaborated search functions, tagging, spell-checking, address books, address completion, filters and personal message categories (rather than cheesy sub-forums). One can easily CC messages to people who are not subscribed etc. In a web browser you get a small box where you have to write with often limited editing capabilities. It's easy to lose all one has written, too. 2. web forums often mangle messages: they have to convert all html-critical stuff (such as < to "<"; etc.), and they often replace or even remove(!) tabs. As a consequence, one can't take such a forum "message" and pipe it into the "patch" program, whereas it's quite normal to save a whole email and pipe it into "patch" with no problems whatsoever. 3. one can easily edit and reply to several emails while being offline. This is a pain with forums if you don't have DSL/ISDN, but an expensive dial-up connection. 4. this may not mean much to some people, but *I* prefer to see the sender's email address, the "date" header (with time zone information) etc. On forums all you get is a cheesy nick behind which people hide (I do :-). Sure, the admin has the mail address. But I'm not the admin. 5. it might be easier to explain POP3 scanning of the local provider's mail server to one's employer, than it might be to explain scanning the same "game" server in the U.S. all day long (yes, I'm speaking of www.flightgear.org ;-) I'm sure if I thought about it longer I would find some more arguments. Why is it that none of the *many* development projects that I know uses a forum for development communication? Those are always only used for users, if at all. We have already had the same discussion in the past, and the mailing list clearly won. Please don't bring the same thing up in regular intervals, in the hope that people eventually give up their resistance. The only effect would be that developers continued on an inofficial list, basically ignoring the "official" development forum. :-P m. PS: yes, I created an account on the users forum ... :-} ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
