Why not use forum?

[Ewan Marshall]

Crane, Matthew wrote:
> That's debatable.  
>
> If the average user reads a small set of messages.  If the forum is
> easily cached by a browser.  If the mail readers use gmail or similar
> and already download ads everytime they view a messsage.  
>
> But yea the dvd comment was kind of stupid. 
>
> Matt
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org
> [mailto:community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org] On Behalf Of Andy Powell
> Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 12:10 PM
> To: community at lists.openmoko.org
> Subject: Re: Why not use forum?
>
> On Friday 13 June 2008 13:07, Crane, Matthew wrote:
>
> Matt,
>
> there's a lot more crap transferred when using a forum (graphics + html
> + the 
> actual message) than when using a mail client. The main disadvantage is
> that 
> you have to be online to read a forum. For email you don't. 
>
> Your DVD comment is irrelavant.
>
>   
Have you written forum software? If so you'll know it's not easily 
cached at all.

Also how do you get unread message notification on forums? With mail 
your clients can store whether you have read a message or not for every 
message (it is a distributed system so you only have yours to worry 
about), a forum has to do it for every user and every message... Most 
allow admin to set a hard limit timewise, but you yourself may want 
older messages marked as read... Also forums only do whole threads, not 
individual post in thread.