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Subject: Re: [motm] Update/sale/web site relaunch plans/new forum

From: John Mahoney <jmahoney@...>
Date: 2008-11-24

I'm with Andre, Jason, and Ben in that I prefer email discussion
lists to forums. A forum has higher "friction".

Forums do have some advantages, as John Rice said. In actual use,
though, the categorization does not hold up. The topic of a thread
usually deviates from the title (subject) assigned to that thread --
just like with email lists, but it's worse when it happens in a forum.

Forums are never as organized as they are supposed to be. Email
lists, of course, don't even pretend to be organized. ;-) But, with
email lists, it's easy to scan through every message. Serendipity favors email.

It might seem that a forum is better for archives, but in reality you
need a good search feature for a forum or an email archive. For truly
archive-worthy reference material, a wiki is a better solution, anyway.

Whether you switch to a forum or not, I suggest that you add a wiki,
too. (With a password that's given on request to keep out the spammers.)

John