> I have been reading this list for nearly a year now and it is very > discouraging to > receive so much criticism for my first post.
it means that you've touched upon an important issue to the readers of the list. this, in and of itself, means that you are getting valuable information from the list readers about what's important to them. keep in mind that any criticism that you received wasn't criticism of you, just of the idea of a forum. it could be that many of the list members are a bunch of barnacles who prefer to receive most of their information through a single interface. i'd certainly count myself in the barnacle crowd -- i think that the information in this list doesn't need much 'jazzing up', and that an arbitrary mail client gives me excellent capacity to participate in the list. low-ascii serves as a great carrier of information for me, and keeps the distraction level down. without the easy ability to communicate with other list members using shockwave flash or the urgent need to create 5.1 HD movies of computers battling it out mano-a-mano, i find myself more rapidly focused on the topic of finding good go playing algorithms. with that having been said, let me try to address some of the ways in which email lists can be finessed to service many of the needs that you bring up. it could be that with a decent mail or news client, all of your worries will be like yesterday's mashed potatoes. > * One can post in various sections. The sections we can have here could be: > Monte Carlo Go, Search in Go, Learning in Go, CGOS, KGS, Human Go. "Subject: " lines work for this purpose, and additionally allow for the easy creation of new "sections". > * Threads are easy to find and each thread has a post count. The post count is > a good indication of how interesting that thread is. For example if there are > many > threads that I haven't had time to read, then I will first read the ones with > the most > post count. You might want to use a mail client that allows you to thread messages by From: and by Subject:. Many usenet news readers do this automagically, but autosorting your inbound mail by sender and subsorting by subject line will get you 90% of the way there. > * Different viewing options: flat (newest first), threaded or tree. These can > be useful > for various purposes. Again, most usenet news clients and many mail readers will allow you to do this -- you can treat the threads as a way to diminish the importance of old topics, or expand them and subsort in order to find exactly what you're looking for, quickly. > * Each post has a '+' and '-' associated with it. This means that if you > agree with > the post then you simply press the '+' button and the plus count goes up, > similarly > if you disagree you press the '-' button. This serves two purposes: you don't > have to > post extra posts just to show your agreement/disagreement, which saves space > and > your time; also this is a great way to make votes - those in favour press > '+', those > against press '-'. this is indeed an advantage. > * Each post is associated with a date and time. Also it is easy to ressurect > threads > that are years old. the "From " field of all mail messages contains this information, and many mail clients will allow you to see this information, sort your messages using it, selectively subsort messages inside threads by date, etc., etc. the "Date: " field is another one that many mail and news clients will let you thread, sort and subsort with. the world is your oyster. an IMAP mail client is one way to keep track of very old messages in a convenient way, and usually has threading and sorting capabilities built-in as a necessary function for most users. > * If you had a typo or a mistake in your post, you can easily edit it. This > is extremely > useful. here i might disagree. i can see the advantage of being able to fix something that you later realize was wrong, but being required to take the extra effort to get it right in the first place can lead to more thoughtful posting. it doesn't mandate it by any means, but it certainly seems to encourage it. it's a kind of self-moderation imposed by the interface. > * It is not necessary, but it is always nice to see who you are talking to. a pasty, potato chip smeared face greets you with lips stretched into a wide, badly socialized grin and eyes that stare blankly into dimly-lit monitor space as unbrushed, poorly-aligned teeth wedged uncomfortably against a crimson gumline provide the main visual contrast to the field of empty soda bottles and cans that litter the backdrop of a room desperately in need of a good vacuuming. that's the horrorshow you're looking forward to, my friend. > * There is a very powerful message searching engine, which incorporates: > section type, date range and member name. a surprising number of mail and usenet news clients have this same functionality. > * You can watch threads that are of interest to you. i'm sorry to keep repeating myself, but an adequate mail client has an equal capacity to service this need. additionally, many mail clients will allow you to input your message using whatever font, font size, font color, spacing, or other visual manipulation of text that you desire as well. free, web-based clients that will do this include yahoo's beta mail reader. > I hope I have given some good reasons for having a forum. Since so many people > here are against losing the list, why not the following: we keep the list, > but give > members the option of using a forum? This way we can all be happy :) the members of the list *do* have the option of using a forum. all it takes is for someone (anyone) to set one up and announce it. you just want to be careful not to splinter the list members into small groups that don't communicate with each other, as it is much less likely that a large group will check two areas for the same information that they could otherwise get at just one. PS: i note that in your last posting, that your X-Mailer line looks like: X-Mailer: mPOP Web-Mail 2.19 You might want to give yahoo mail or google mail a try (both are free) if you are most comfortable working with a browser to do your posting. s. ____________________________________________________________________________________ We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love (and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list. http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/265 _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
