I'm in full agreement with this as well. I've been on a few email
lists that were converted to web forums over the years. To date, I've
never had time or initiative to wade through any of those forums and
since nobody but me is still on the email lists, I've seen little
reason to post to those lists anymore. It's likely the same will
happen with MOTM. Luckily, there is still SDIY and ModularSynthPanels
email lists. Look for me there.
On 24-Nov-08, at 10:08 AM, Scott K Warren wrote:
> 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
>>
>>