Re: [Sheflug] Use of mailing lists and online forums

[John Southern <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 10 April 2008 20:25:24 John Beaumont wrote:
> It is good to see some small support for online forums from a question I
> knew would illicit a bit of a circlejerk over mailing lists.

Surely that is a good thing and means both have a place.

> I visit the Ubuntu forums every day and rather enjoy the community
> there. The sheer amount of posts per minute would make a mockery of
> keeping track of a mailing list. Where is this extra effort in visiting
> your favourite forums everyday? I open firefox, all my sites are
> immediately there on the toolbar, and I can browse at my leisure without
> having to store hundreds of thousands of posts (in Ubuntu's case
> millions) locally.

Well that does mean that you have to visit every single forum rather than one 
email system that has them all.
The number of posts does not matter. If you have a huge number of posts per 
minute, then either way you will not be able to read them. Email mailing 
lists do allow for threading to organise postings.

I see the ability of storing hundreds of thousands of posts an advantage as I 
can look at them whenever I want and use my regexp search tools to find 
things. Also mailing list threads cannot be removed at the whim of a 
moderator who does not like the way a project is going. Storage is so cheap I 
even log IRC channels.

> Both formats are useful and have a place. Sheflug wouldn't work as a
> forum, it would receive low traffic and appear dead at times.
> Ubuntu-security-announce is a godsend of a list. But I would prefer the
> higher traffic sites to remain as huge publc archive forums.

Most mailing lists have public archives.

> Can anyone see somethingawful forums being successful as a mailing list? Nor 
can I.

No and the same is for b3ta, piston heads etc, but web forums are not the 
answer for all. Usenet carries a huge amount of traffic and users have not 
moved over to forums yet.

John

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