Thanks everyone for your comments. So we've concluded that the people on the mailing list prefer mailing lists. :-)
Seriously, I'm glad it's not just me that finds mailing lists more convenient, and that other people prefer them for the same reasons. I think Stilgherrian summed it up best: > > * The people who want answers would prefer a web forum, because > they can go to a website, post their question and then look at > the answers, without having to subscribe to a list and get a > whole lot of email they're not interested in. Fair enough, 'cos > when you've got a problem to solve you want to solve it *now*. > > * The people who supply those answers would prefer a mailing > list, because then they see the questions roll past and are > prompted to answer the ones they're able to answer. And that's > fair enough too, because they're basically giving free advice. > In my view, the convenience of the regulars who are answering questions is more important than the convenience of the people who want a question answered. Jason made a good point: > > I would think that what you want is a really well designed mailing list > archive. I hardly ever run across a really well designed list archive for > any list. > http://news.gmane.org/thread.php?group=gmane.comp.web.analog.general is probably the best of the three archives I have at the moment (even though they're really focussing on the mail-to-news gateway). I've promoted that archive more heavily in the most recent version of the documentation, http://www.analog.cx/docs6/mailing.html (and I used the word 'forum'). In the next version of the documentation, I'll also make the subscribe and unsubscribe instructions more obvious. But I take Jason's point. Why can't the archives look as good and work as well as the best forums? If anyone knows of a better archive solution, or wants to run one, please let me know! Thanks again to everybody who has commented on this issue so far. -- Stephen Turner, Cambridge, UK http://homepage.ntlworld.com/adelie/stephen/ "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." (Edsger W. Dijkstra) +------------------------------------------------------------------------ | TO UNSUBSCRIBE from this list: | http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help/unsubscribe.html | | Digest version: http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help-digest/ | Usenet version: news://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.analog.general | List archives: http://www.analog.cx/docs/mailing.html#listarchives +------------------------------------------------------------------------
