I prefer mailing lists, which is why I am here. Discussion and replies
are below:
I prefer mailing lists because there is a small technical barrier to
entry. Chances are that you had to use a search engine to find it,
which means you probably already tried to find what you were looking for
via that search engine and failed. Many noobs don't even know what a
mailman list is, and that's good. I want to talk to other people who
can actually help me. This mailing list is not primarily for a social
experience. For most forums, a significant amount of code is dedicated
to smileys, avatars, signatures, friends/foes, etc, because they need
the social experience, because they are ad-revenue driven. The amount
of whitespace on web forums, compared to email, is terrible.
Here's a thought: The quality of the discussion is primarily impacted
by how those with authoritative knowledge (Valve employees and pros)
engage in the discussion. If Valve employees were more inclined to
participate in discussion on a web forum, I'd go web forum. I would not
cry too hard if this one mailing list went away. It's just games.
About the archives: Why are they password protected, and why has my
password never ever worked? From day one, the password that came in my
welcome email didn't work and I never tried again. I have never ever
searched the archives because I can't.
It is nice to have a single point of discussion for issues, as opposed
to many different sites and applications. As an example, I am an
aquarium hobbyist, and I often visit five different web forums because
each has some specialty, or the community is fractured up. This is
annoying. This is also why I don't check forums.srcds.com but once in a
great while.
I've never seen a duel-pane message board reader that worked well. I
see browsing message boards as messy business. I use mutt and Seamonkey
as my mail clients, depending on where I'm at.
I use my android phone to check email. Checking a web forum would be
significantly more difficult. I would not do it, at all. I check
email, rss, and podcasts with my phone. Web forums are iPhone/Android
unfriendly. My Android client is k9mail.
Some people brought up the issue of email spam because they fear giving
out the mail address. Use a spam filter. I don't get spam because I
have my own server with Spamassassin running. If you are using a free
mail provider, you get what you pay for (adverts). Business and
professionals use email. I wish I had more pleasant advice to give out,
but that's the truth.
What about a forum that sends out email update announcements? I don't
use those myself, with a very few exceptions of where I really must.
This is mostly because most of those forums have a very low signal to
noise ratio. I only click on a very few threads. In other words, my
participation level is lower with web forums.
Replies:
Kigen wrote:
> Honestly, I don't like getting my inbox spammed with these messages.
That is what mail rules/filters are for.
DarthNinja wrote:
>
> I don't like the idea of forums, because it's a passive stream of data.
> People have to visit to check up on topics.
> People are just a lot less likely to reply to things in a forum
environment.
I agree.
msleeper wrote:
> Valve, I'm sorry, but your forum population is about as dumb as
> facepunch, and I hope you realize it.
Harsh, but true.
This is why I signed up for the mailing list. I am pro network
engineer/unix sysadmin, but I didn't know anything about srcds servers a
year ago. I needed a place where I could come to for technical help on
server administration related tasks. I did not come to discuss in-game
content issues at all -- such issues are good for the main forums.
That being said, let's face it: More than half of the people on this
(linux) mailing list doesn't know what a pipe, |, does on the bash
command line. Their preferred editor is the pico clone nano. Just
gotta put up with it... or maybe even help a noob once in awhile.
Steffen Schmolinske wrote:
> I'd like to have a forum just for the sake of proper archives & search
> functions.
Valve is, right now, actively stopping you from having this. Ask them
why they are doing that.
Ryan Stecker wrote:
> I would love a forum. I don't think the mailing list provides any decent
> method of searching,
Again, Valve is stopping you from having this. Ask them why they are
doing that. Why are they taking away from you something that you would
otherwise have? They have deliberately password protected the archives
and prevent search engines from searching them.
msleeper wrote:
> the main reason the list fails
> (and moving SPUF would only make it worse) is that most people post
> crap nobody needs to hear or wants to read and isn't useful.
> ...
> And guess what - we don't care about or need to hear about you telling
> us that. Shut up, keep your stupid opinions to yourselves, and maybe
> there wouldn't be a "problem" in the first place.
Jesse Porter wrote:
> The
> farther away from server maintenance and updates the discussion get, the
> less interest I have (recent discussion on classes, etc).
This is just the classic pros vs noobs thing. Reference ESR's Asking
Smart Questions, which most have not read, or even heard of.
Because this mailing list involves video games, it has a youth and
stupid-noob factor -- not to be mistaken as the same issue. I don't
think that can be helped. A FAQ to throw at them every time they failed
to google it might help.
--
# Jesse Molina
# Mail = [email protected]
# Page = [email protected]
# Cell = 1.602.323.7608
# Web = http://www.opendreams.net/jesse/
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