Why not use forum?

Fri Jun 13 19:30:02 CEST 2008

Ok, this is pointless!  But I'll participate anyway:

wim.delvaux at adaptiveplanet.com wrote:
> On Thursday 12 June 2008 23:33:37 Ben Burdette wrote:
>   
>>>> Hi!
>>>> I was wondering - why are we not using forum for community?
>>>> It's much  better to view, you can subscribe and unsubscribe to the
>>>> topics you want and etc.
>>>>         
>>> For me, mailing list is much better to view, filter, read off-line,
>>> quick download etc. etc. For admins, mailing list is much easier to
>>> maintain (no buggy, crappy phpBB, etc.).
>>>       
>> I wouldn't say mailing lists are entirely bug free - witness the
>> duplicate messages I regularly delete out of my openmoko folder on a
>> regular basis.
>>
>> for me some advantages of forums:
>>
>> - far easier to set up and use, no filters and etc.
>>     
>
> Supposing that you read other mail using thunderbird your mail is always 
> running.  So Instead of firing up FF, clicking on a bookmark, selecting the 
> forum and waiting all the time while pages load, look at your running mail 
> and see if messages of OM have arrived.  'easier to use ????' what could be 
> easier ?
>
>   
I mean with initial setup.   Its much easier to navigate to a web page 
than it is to subscribe to a email list and then set up proper filtering 
in your email client.  Plus you get to see all the old messages if you 
want. 
>> - far less distracting, with no emails coming in every 5 secs for every
>> topic.
>>     
>
> I have set up a rule automatically moves the OM messages to a folder I read 
> when I have time.  Setting up that rule takes less time than registering on a 
> forum
>
>   
My thunderbird brings up a little box every 15 minutes announcing the 
latest from the OM list primarily.  95% of it I don't care about. 
>> - don't have to download 1 million emails onto all my machines that I
>> use thunderbird on.
>>     
>
> Leave your messages on the server for all thunderbirds that are NOT master so 
> you only download the messages you want to read.
>
>   
Point taken.  At this point I have 4 instances of thunderbird among my 
machines, I get tired of watching 700 OM emails downloading into my inbox. 
>> +1 for forums from me.
>>
>> or, why not usenet??   what's wrong with newsgroups?  I don't understand
>> why people prefer mailing lists to newsgroups.
>>     
>
> Because mailing lists do not require you to check for new news from time to 
> time but you get messages as they become available.
>   
I think that's why I like mailing lists less.  One reason, anyway.
> Because mails are much easier to process than web pages are. (bloated with 
> stuff as they frequently are).
>   
I have to object to this!  Email lists are far more subject to cruft 
than forums - because everyone feels they have to include the context of 
a conversation in every email!  So you read the same text over and over, 
each time a little more indented. 
> Because you have fewer steps needed to access messages.  Forums generally 
> require you to select at least the forum you want to open).
>   
You could always bookmark the forum you are interested in, so you go 
straight there instead of having to navigate through the forum interface. 

But I still don't understand why groups choose mailing lists over 
newsgroups.  Weren't newsgroups designed with this kind of thing in 
mind?   By default you just download the headers without having to get 
the text of every message, you can subscribe and unsubscribe from them 
without impacting your regular email account.  I know you can just get 
email headers if you want, but that means I have to set my regular email 
account up all 'header only' or all downloading everything. 