On Tue, 23 Mar 1999 05:06:38 -0500 Shun Cheung wrote:
> Because the web has become a lot more popular since this Digest started,
> I wonder whether a web-based forum makes sense. For example, I really
> like the format of the discussion forums at photo.net. You can access
> the old articles very easily, and posting are available instantly. I think
> those are main advantages over our current e-mail distribution.
No! I would -very- much prefer the postings via email
rather than the web. Why?
(a) My Internet access costs me money; I can download maybe
100 messages in a minute or two and read them offline,
in the comfort of my own PC ;-). My cost is one
telephone unit (local calls are not free in Ireland).
With a web-based service, if I spend one hour reading
the postings, it costs me around 12 telephone units.
That's a 1200% cost increase!
(b) When receiving the postings via email, I can do all
sorts of fancy filtering. I am not limited to what the
webmaster decides is best for me.
(c) With email, I can easily save interesting postings into
folders for future reference.
(d) With email, I'm not forced to wait for unsolicited and
totally annoying adverts to download and flash in my face.
(e) With email, I can forward the postings to a distribution
list on my private network. This is a huge savings on
Internet bandwidth.
(f) I can copy the postings to a floppy and read them on a
machine that doesn't have Internet access. There are
still a great many PCs in the world that don't have
Internet access but can receive Internet mail.
(g) I can use a program that's optimised for email reading,
writing and management, rather than being forced to use
that silly one-size-fits-all web browser interface.
Please don't do away with email access to the postings!
Bye,
Mike
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.NetworX.ie
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