Hello, Am Mittwoch, 25. Januar 2006 23:25 schrieb Jan Karjalainen: > I think there is a need for a forum, for a couple of reasons: > > - The ability to easily search for answers. When you get a reply > stating "this was discussed in December, search the list", a newbie > really doesn´t have a clue how or where to search.
This means the mailing list archives should have a search feature included (which is already discussed AFAIK). > Compare this to the search funtionality of a forum. OK, good point. But google-searching the list archives isn't that bad, too ;-) > - Dial-up connections aren´t fast enough for downloading a couple of > hundred mails each day, many of which you don´t have any interest in. *LoL* - this is the "funniest" reason for a web forum I ever heard. The dial-up connections I know are paid per minute, so using a forum will be *much* more expensive than the 5 minutes you need to download your mails and 2 more minutes for sending your questions/replies. (I did this over years: 56k modem and suse-linux mailinglist with up to 200 mails per day. No problem so far - but my new 2 MBit line is better of couse ;-)) > - Familiarity. Almost everyone has visited a forum, and even > participated in discussions on one. Maybe. But even more people already have sent and received mail. (Not necessarily via mailinglists, but I think that doesn't make a big difference.) I see another problem with forums: People are familar with using their mail client - and can have *one* mail client for all mailing lists. For forums, you have *another* user interface for each forum and need to login before posting. This sounds terrible to me, but maybe an average newbie ;-) thinks different. One (THE?) problem that people may have with mailinglists could be filtering - if you don't, you will have a nice chaos in your inbox. Maybe the subscribe page should contain a "survive with 200 mails/day HOWTO" ;-) If you want a forum - no problem. But don't expect me to be there ;-) Regards, Christian Boltz -- "And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports on it, you know they are just evil lies." [Linus Torvalds] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
