7 Mar
2005
7 Mar
'05
8:05 p.m.
John Foust wrote:
At 08:28 AM 3/7/2005, David H. Barr wrote:
If it's popular, it *must* be right.
Given the task at hand, given the needs of the users, given the
recently described hassles, is mailing-list technology the best
design and solution for this task?
Yes. In my Never-Humble opinion, yes.
I have a ton of technical information archived in my CC email. Web
forums don't offer one-click archival.
A bunch of us don't have fast connections, and any web interface is
going to be slower than text email. If I'm paying by the byte or by the
minute for a connection, I can download all my mail, read it and compose
replies offline, and upload all my replies in a very short time. There
is NO corollary option on a web forum.
How the heck could I kill-file Sellam on a web forum?
Who told you that managing a web forum would be simpler than managing
a mailing list?
Email offers many, many options for thread views, sorting, saving,
and sending that may be _available_ on a web forum, but that are not
variable on a web forum. What I mean is that depending on my mail
client, I can pre-sort list mail, see it in sequential order or as
threads, color-code various posters, etc. You can do some of that in
web fora, but every subscriber has the same very limited set of options
and views. As a mailing list, it's totally customizable by the user.
All the world is not HTML. I personally don't care much for the
World Wide Web, the software to "surf" it, or the content it attracts.
I've seen several LUG mailing lists go webbie, and a couple of
Unix/SIG lists go to forum basis. They all either folded or went
strictly L33T H4XX0RZ in a matter of months. It's a fool's interface,
and it attracts fools and hordes of dilettante subscribers.
Imagine 3 Jim Isbells for every serious collector on the list. I
really do not think that an exponential increase in subscriptions would
be anything but a disaster.
You mentioned ease-of-use and accesibility in another post. I've
received 350-odd emails today, mostly not spam, and will read it all and
reply to 30-40 of them tonight. I will very likely not touch my mouse
during that process. Please feel free to name a platform-independent
browser/forum combination that allows reading, sorting, and replying
with simple hotkey navigation.
Doc
>Why the emotional attraction to a mailing list as
opposed to the web?
Because the web is shit for just about everything?
That would explain its unpopularity, of course.