Colin: I'm going to reply to you point for point because, frankly after reading your reply I felt like you were dredging up excuses, not reasons and I just feel compelled to challege your assertions.
To the rest of you, please feel free it ignore the rest of my email if you would rather not be bothered with this issue. I'd love to see a forum but could live without one too. But I just couldn't help myself but go into pedantic mode given his arguments. ;) >> Perhaps you should try a different email client, then? So you are suggesting that I should change the application I spend 60% of my business day which meets many other needs besides just email so that I may accomodate your dislike for a forum? I wouldn't actually think you'd want to impose that on someone else, but it rather sounds that way. >> The only reason I say Often, is because the version of Safari I'm using allows you to resize text entry elements. I don't follow your reasoning. >> I use a vBulliten based forum every day and it's torture. I really dislike forums, but the people and issues I discuss on the forum outweigh my dislike of forums. To-may-to, To-mah-to. >> Er, I know that was meant as a joke, but calling someone you're trying to win to your side a luddite isn't the best way to do so. You mean there was more than a 0.00001% chance I'd change your mind? Mailing list vs. forum is a religion just like Windows vs. Linux or Mac, REST vs SOAP, Java vs. .NET, Perl vs. Python. Conservative vs. Liberal. (US) Republican vs. Democrat. Christianity vs. Islam vs. Judiasm. And so on. There is rarely rational thought involved when discussing those kind of issues. So, I had zero expectation of converting you at all; I was making arguments for the rest of the list participants. Anywho, as has been said many times before; best not to take personal offense at what people say on the list because its far too easy to misinterpret. I've frequently had to count to 100 before typing, and I just joined recently. >> Can I *reply* from it? I'm pretty sure the answer is no, and the composing interface of my email client is much nicer. If you have an email client that accepts HTML mail and the admin configures the forum for that you can. >> Sure. User names. I hate them. Theyr'e tolerable on IRC, but in an area as permanent and public as a mailinglist/forum I'd rather have my full name associated with my (and others) posts, especially a technical discussion. It's a chore to keep track of remembering what crazy nick name corresponds to which person. I agree with you. That's why I have a policy on a forum I administer for my condo community that everyone uses real names. And I also have the same policy here: http://wiki.welldesignedurls.org/The_Rules There's nothing that says we couldn't (and shouldn't) have the same policy for a Microformats forum. >> Mailing lists also allow you to use an already established "identity" -- your email. On a forum, you have to create a completely new web presence and identity. I don't see why one would have to create a completely new identity. I almost always use "MikeSchinkel" or "Mike Schinkel" as applicable except in the rare cases I want to be anonymous. Not so helpful for "John Smith," but for most of us it's not an issue. >> You can link it to your other ones with signatures and profiles, etc, but still, it's another login and another identity. Vs. another mailing list subscription to manage. To-may-to, To-mah-to. >> The above username/identity debacle a pretty huge one, and probably my number one complaint. Maybe we are getting some where; has my "real name" policy not addressed your concern? >> BBcode is a secondary one. It's awful. I hate having to deal with [quote] tags. Chevrons for quoting is so easier. Plain text email for the win. If you use the "quote" button instead of the "reply" button vBulletin quotes it for you. That said you can always use the same style quoting on a forum as you do in email if that your style. I find quoting in email much more or a PITA because I have to quote every line instead of just the begin and end of the quote. And if the person quoting is not careful (and who is?) the quotes will be too long and then you get an absolutely visual mess which is almost impossible to read. What's more, mailing list is plain text and makes it infinitely harder to present information in a understandable form than on a forum where you have lots of formatting options. And vBulletin has an optional WYSIWYG editor now so BBCode's not an issue. >> It also costs money. Who's going to pay for that? vB $85? Are you for real? $85 is pocket change for almost anyone with the technical skill to be active on this list. I'm currently unsure who my next client or revenue source will be (long story; after 12 years running Xtras.Net, I need a break and am being very selective), and *I'd* pay for the damn thing if that's what it took. >> is also not exactly slim in the markup it generates. Who would pay for that extra bandwidth? YOU ARE NOT REALLY SERIOUS ABOUT THAT POINT, are you? You are saying this on a list where the philosophy is "Don't worry about HTML bloat, just worry about the semantics?" Just how much extra bandwidth do you think a relatively low traffic forum will require?!? YouTube this aint. I'm pretty sure we could host the forum here http://www.asmallorange.com/services/hosting/ for $5 a month and stay under their 10Gb limit. But if things go really extreme we could pay $30 a month and go for 100Gb; that's 100,000 page views a month on their largest page size. Think we'll make that any time soon? And I don't know any stats on this, but I'll be that a mailing list server takes more bandwidth than a forum because forum pages are on demand and *everything* gets mailed to *everyone* on a mailing list. I'm sorry, but with that "objection" I can't take your objections seriously anymore. It's clear you're just looking for things to object to because you don't like green eggs and ham. Sam I am. Well, I know you've tried using forums, but the point is your mind's already made up and nothing's going to change it. Which is fine, except for when you dig in to impose your preferences on others where there could otherwise possibly be a middle ground. >> There's the layout, for one. I've admined forums (phpBB, not the greatest, but it's free) in the past and people always seem to ask for things when you're the admin, especially related to other users (bans of all shapes and sizes). Again, people ask for new lists on the mailing list server. To-may-to, To-mah-to. Finally, it's telling that you didn't even mention the fact that we could have a forum AND an integrated mailing list and you wouldn't have to be bothered by the forum if you didn't want to be other than being insulted by my making levity of the disagreement in preference. If we did go that route then we'd have the best of both worlds and wouldn't have those who dislike forums imposing their preferences on the on the rest of the group. OTOH, this is not ours to decide anyway; we are both just guests to microformats. And with that said, I'm really hoping this email didn't "overstay my welcome" with our hosts... -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/ P.S. Please accept we are debating the issue and don't take any of this personally. _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
