Am 24.08.2011 22:47, schrieb NoOp:
> Hmmm... OK. It was 'tongue-in-cheek' Drew. I'll not even comment on the
> Sun->Oracle lists transition :-) But I will add this; if OOoA goes to
> forums only, then I'll not be participating.
I think we all should try to become more open for new development. It is
clear that mailing lists are easier to handle for the "regulars", the
most active participants. But OTOH a huge number of users looking for
help (if not the vast majority) aren't experienced mail users.
The results are known:
- posts without subjects
- destroyed threads
- frequent mails with "why do I get all these mails, please help me out
of here" (and that's just the polite version ;-))
- quoting disasters
etc.
So many of the benefits of a mailing list are partially destroyed.
OTOH most users are used to web fora - and they know how to use them.
For many years my answer to the question "mailing list or web forum for
user support" would have been the same as yours - but times have changed
and so I tried to find out why I prefer mailing lists over web fora.
Remember, we are not talking about technical discussions or developer
talks, it's about supporting users that usually just want to drop a
question and not "join a community". Or maybe, they might consider
joining later, when they received a lot of help and started to like the
forum.
At the end there are only two things that really upset me:
- without threads longer discussions are a mess
- especially for power supporters it is important to track the status
of posts reliably ("read" status or other markers like "important" etc.).
There are already many fora that support threading, and as the
maintenance of the thread no longer depends on the capabilities of the
mail clients and their users, they might even do it better than the
average support mailing list (IMHO users@ooo is a mess in that regard).
So for me the second point (tracking of status) would be crucial: if the
web forum was able to support me *reliably* in that regard, I could come
to terms with it.
It would be even better if there was a forum software that interacts
with a mailing list in a bidirectional way: best of both worlds.
Please, try to think about your statement again: is it really impossible
to cope with web fora? It would be a pity to lose your valuable
contributions in case the discussion arrived at the decision to prefer
web fora for support.
BTW, mailing lists also are limited in the way how you can work with
them - you can't offer new features as this would require to update all
the mail clients. In web fora everything is under control of the admin.
Adding better search options (better than "download the archive and
search for it") or rating techniques could avoid a lot of questions that
have been answered already - wouldn't that be an improvement? We won't
be able to add any new features supporting users to a mailing list - web
fora can do a lot more and there are numerous examples for it.
As a developer I like "stackoverflow.com" where posts and replies can be
voted and posters get credits in return (simply put). Both means can
help users to get through the jungle of posts and find the best answer
just by searching, not by asking. And posts can be tagged, so you can
search for them much better and faster than just scanning subjects.
Again, we should try to become more open for new development and
evaluate it without preconceived opinions.
Regards,
Mathias
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