On Dec 4, 2005, at 6:44 AM, Jason Bainbridge wrote: > What it boils down to is that developer/hacker/tweaker types like > mailing lists and end users like forums. > > Usually all development related discussions are held on a mailing > list and general support is handled through forums with different > sets of people that frequent them with some overlap.
That seems like a pretty good summary. I'm a developer, and I've always seen forums as a black hole into which information falls, never to get back out, but that's because I can't cope with the "go to web site periodically to see if anything has changed" model that most forums seem to love. That, and for some reason most of the big forums don't seem to be indexed by Google. So, they don't help me when I'm searching for new information, and once I find it, they don't help me stay on top of what's happening. I don't think either of these are *fundamental* problems with forums, but most of the forums that I've used seem to suffer from them. So I won't generally use forums unless I'm left with no alternative. Scott
