Karsten, I probably miss some fundamental understanding at the infrastructure level about 'forum' and 'mailing list'. This is also caused by various technologies used in higher education, whether proprietary, open, or free, each with its own nomenclature for online communication means. I cannot emphasize enough the extent of confusion faculty and students alike have (myself included), when it comes to mailing list, forum, listserv, groupserv, discussion board, message board, thread, post, group email, and so on. Many times there is also a formal and sometimes lengthy process in setting up online communication that's course specific and does not quite fall under the tools of the course management system the institution uses. This is especially aggravated when communication occurs across courses or with course outsiders (experts, invited speakers, community partners, etc.), who cannot apply for accounts with that college or university.
My way of providing some kind of asynchronous online group communication (when I don't have staff or computing resources to build and maintain a supporting infrastructure) is to use Google Sites, Google Groups, or WordPress (thank goodness they offer free hosting!). Google Groups, for example, is my means of setting up a course mailing list (haven't thought of calling it forum), to which all students who register for that course subscribe. The purpose of it is to keep all outside-class conversation in one place. Class participants use either email or the mailing list site to ask and reply; they use the site to search, check on members, and share work to some extent (by uploading files or setting up pages). I deliberately stay away from imposing any rules about how to use the tool. The focus is on the activity itself rather than what's convenient and in which situation and for whom. So here is my basic question, which comes before 'compare and contrast' the two: what's a mailing list and what's a forum? I'm interested in understanding the concepts rather than software package, implementation, or administration of these services. I won't be surprised to find out that in fact current technologies permit a mailing list to offer forum features and allow a forum to do mailing list jobs. In the end (which is relative, of course, like all things :-), we might find ourselves in the situation of clarifying a bit the taxonomy of concepts that describe online group communication. Mihaela P.S. I apologize for the long rambling, but I barely get a chance to catch up with the teachingopensoruce emails of the week! Guess a few forums will help :-) P.S.2. Karsten, I volunteer to write the TOS textbook's glossary (along with others who might be interested). -----Original Message----- From: tos-boun...@teachingopensource.org [mailto:tos-boun...@teachingopensource.org] On Behalf Of Karsten Wade Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 3:01 PM To: tos@teachingopensource.org Subject: Re: [TOS] forums.teachingopensource.org On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 03:19:47PM -0700, tosmaillist.neophyte_...@ordinaryamerican.net wrote: > What, in your opinion, is the advantage of Forums over the Mailing List? It's not really advantage over, they serve different purposes. Forums are very nice for: * Drive-by question/answer - you can ask a question or answer one with minimal commitment (subscribing to a mailing list can be an unknown commitment of time.) * A forum is more like "subscribe to one topic" where a list is "subscribe to all topics and mentally filter." * A forum is a lower barrier to entry for a target audience (students and educators using the textbook in a classroom) that is not already invested in FOSS mailing lists. * Forums are nicer for web search, which is important for a community help location. * Forums allow admins/moderators to control threads more tightly - move them, combine them, hide them, block them. A mailing is all or nothing, and you can't selectively block someone from contributing to a specific thread -- all or nothing. For a community, mailing lists and forums work together. Individual parts of the community might use only one or the other for their work, but should be aware of the other and know how to engage there when necessary. - Karsten -- name: Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener team: Red Hat Community Architecture uri: http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki gpg: AD0E0C41 _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
