As an e-mail conceived network DDN will live or die that way. I would guess 95% of online communities "forced" to transition to a web-centric environment die.
The only way Ning or any tool will work is if people can reply/start new topics by e-mail and never have to visit the web site. Anything else will result in about 20% of the people surviving the change in environment which can easily lead to mass extinction. On the other hand, if you think in terms of information "archeology," the e-mail layer is under the web forum layer, which is under the blog layer, which is under the social network layer, which is under the Twitter layer ... :-) So, DDN "the list" will die when most of us kick the bucket because as constituted it is probably not attracting a new generation of participation with web-centric expectations. Or it will die when the host no longer wants to support e-mail fuddy duddies. Tobias mentioned the non-open source proprietary tool NTEN uses (;-)) which is actually pretty good. Sloooowly but surely at E-Democracy.Org we've been webifying our local "Issues Forums" to behave like integrated e-lists/web forums/massive multi-editor blogs/simple social nets using the open source GPL GroupServer.Org tool. When you insist on e-mail publishing you do place yourself outside the mainstream off web developers who hate e-mail. Oh, well. See http://forums.e-democracy.org (face lift coming!) Key to bridging the digital divide is allowing people to be part of the same online space while allowing people to choose their preferred technological interface (how many of you are reading this on your mobile and use idle time in transit as time you use to share in such networks as DDN?) Cheers, Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@digitaldivide.net http://digitaldivide.net/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
