I'm with Andre, Jason, Ben, and John. If I can't get the posts
delivered in real time via email, I will never use the forum. I only
go to the Yahoo group web page to see why it's not delivering emails
to me! I've seen a lot of forums and none has ever provided the ease
of searching and archiving I get from a mailing list. John's points
about this are right on.
skw
On Nov 24, 2008, at 8:40 AM, John Mahoney wrote:
> 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
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>