----- Original Message -----
From: "Fletcher Dunn" <fletch...@valvesoftware.com>
To: "Half-Life dedicated Linux server mailing list"
<hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com>; <hlds@list.valvesoftware.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 1:34 AM
Subject: [hlds] Forum vs. email list
>I am honestly astounded by the amount of people who complain when
people ask for help on help forums or mailing lists. Not everyone
signs up and instantly reads everything, goes through all the
archives, or spends hours researching.
I'd like to use this comment as a springboard for a discussion about
the format of this list.
I hear that a few years ago the idea of migrating the email list to a
forum was kicked around. However, at the time (is this still true today?)
the users of the list didn't like the idea. it is my understanding that
most server admins prefer:
1.) Receiving push notifications.
2.) Viewing the list in their email client
#1 seems like a really compelling advantage (especially for announcements),
while #2 seems like a personal preference, and many people have the opposite
preference.
A forum has several compelling advantages:
1.) Easier to search and find answers to previously asked questions
Only if the search is good, most forums search fail to find answers as
their search methods are:
1. poor
2. slow
2.) Easier to follow a thread of conversation. (I personally find any email
distribution list to become unreadable pretty much instantly, with all the
>>>>'s and broken line breaks that everybody's mail clients and put everywhere.)
It is easier to follow if your new to the conversation, but if your following
the a topic its actually slower, as you need to constantly load lots of old
content and scroll past it.
3.) Easier to modify your post if you notice a mistake or want to clarify
something, rather than making a new post.
This can actually be a down side as it means that its impossible for people to
know that you've changed something.
4.) Easier to delete or move posts if they are spam, rude, inappropriate,
belong in the general TF2 SPUF forum, etc.
Just ban users who abuse, tbh forums attract this behavour much more than
a mailing list.
5.) Easier to ignore an entire thread that you are not interested in.
Not really, when your looking for new posts it will still contantly pop
up, which is not the case in a good mailing list email client.
Could there be some sort of forum + push notification that would satisfy
what everybody wants? This list exists to serve you guys, so I'm curious
what everything thinks. I *believe* most of the guys would find a forum
format (perhaps with some push notification) more convenient.
forums don't work for me as they are too much overhead, I don't have time
to constantly check a forum, where as I do get chance to skim through
the emails from a mailing list and pick out those topics where are
important to me. Even with an email feed a forum has some notable
disadvantages:-
1. Its more time consuming to reply, so you would need to add email reply
submission.
2. It attracts more spam and useless comments, email lists are older and
keep the usual forum trolls out. You get a much higher noise to useful
content ratio on forums.
3. Without push I can only read your news in that location, as a GSP with
30+ similar lists across the industry we need it to be accessible in
one place which an email list provides.
If the list where to migrate to a forum, I would be highly unlikely to
use it which would mean missing out on important announcements and
good content, which would be shame; so my vote would be to keep it
how it is which works well for what we use it for.
Regards
Steve
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