On Mon, 20 Apr 2009, Christina Ducruet wrote:
Starting a new thread regarding the need for a Students for Free Culture
forum where we can converse and build knowledge.
I am a fan of bbPress
Hi all,
I'm going to do something I don't usually do: post to a thread before
reading all of it. Sorry about the delay in my response; lately I have a
three-ish day turnaround for mailing list email.
SUMMARY: I'm working on this, and I have a beta of a forum ready, and I'll
announce it within 24 hours. It will mirror this list; posts on the forum
will be received by list subscribers, and posts on the list can be read on
the forum.
ELONGATION:
I'm setting up a forum now that mirrors fc-discuss. Until we theme it, it
won't be super pretty, and I apologize for that. But FUDForum is the only
forum package I have seen that has built-in support for mirroring a
mailing list, and I am really not very interested in separating the
discuss community. (We will work on theming it, but I admit we may unleash
it on y'all before we do theme it.)
I have a beta set up already, and within 24 hours I'll say it's ready for
public use, and have read this thread and respond to all y'all's feedback.
I have my own feelings about mailing lists and forums.
I think there's a crucial divide between two sorts of people:
Some people are comfortable handling lots of email (or pretend they are),
and some people are not.
The latter prefer web forums; the former (claim to or really do) prefer
mailing lists. I'm in the camp that prefers email. People in my camp will
say things like, "Fix your mailer — it sends out HTML mail!", or "Comply
with the MIME standards!" or "Get a real mailer that supports threading
properly!" This last one is interesting; we're trying to help people by
saying, "If you use the threading feature of your email program, your life
can be easier."
One reason people like me say things like that is we're nerds who believe
that many, many problems in society can be solved with the right software.
To a large extent we're right.
<snark>But life is too short to teach you all how to use email.</snark> I
say, fine. You guys who don't want to do this by email can do it by a web
forum. I have respect for the fact that we all have a lot to do. I can
accommodate that by offering a web forum that mirrors this list.
If many of you unsubscribe from the mailing list and just read this
FC-Discuss community via a web forum, I'm fine with that. Enjoy this
content however you want; if you don't like email, I'm not going to bother
trying to change that.
I'm not currently interested in splitting this community, however. Those
who prefer web forums to email should be able to communicate with people
who don't.
(To help me get it done even faster than 24 hours I'm going to send out a
request for help to the webteam@ list right now.)
Yours truly,
-- Asheesh.
P.S. I will soon write up a similar rant about why I think Reply-To
munging is more helpful than harmful.
--
Q: How many Harvard MBA's does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Just one. He grasps it firmly and the universe revolves around him.
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