You raise very valid concerns John Sechrest. @ Zoho Discussions we had
this in mind when we developed the product. Apart from the web based
access, we have active bi-directional emailing too. Of course, you are
welcome to give Zoho Discussions a spin and come back with comments -
for I am sure your feedback will only help improve the product.
Regards
Dhan
Zoho Discussions
On Feb 9, 10:46 pm, John Sechrest sechr...@gmail.com wrote:
The difference between mailing lists and forums is much more complex and
much more subtle that you are outlining here.
I have seen several efforts to move to forums blow up discussions. In
addition, I have also seen moves like this end up translating into a
biforcation of the conversation into two different groups.
The choice of how you view data is a critical one. And I totally agree about
the need for a tool that helps you focus your attention well. For me, google
groups + gmail does this well.
In general, I have yet to meet a forum that I like. Web based forums hide
information and make it harder for me to find things. I find this especially
true of forum sites like NING. (pet peave)
I do not know how zoho forums work, having never used them.
For me, I am immediately suspicious when I see the word forum. Since forums
usually take me more time to process, take more energy to keep in context.
I suspect it is an information processing style issue, since these are the
very issues you are trying to address.
I would just urge caution. A shift like this from google groups to zoho
forums is likely to quietly and subtly alter who is participating, and who
stays connected to the group.
I have watched other groups have a significant shift of membership with tool
changes like this.
Be sure you are getting what you think you are getting. And be sure you know
which audience you are serving with the change.
On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 7:52 AM, Alex Hillman
dangerouslyawes...@gmail.comwrote:
So, Woody just suggested that an active thread be moved out of the main
channel so as to not disrupt others. While I think it was a good topic to
keep in the group's visibility, his question of can I move this to a sub
folder reminded me of something.
Google Groups kinda sucks.
To be fair, it's become our home. This is the most active repository of
information for coworking, and the place where I send people first to learn
more and meet more coworking people. But the Google Group is anything but
good for discovery. Spam moderation is chaos for the people who actively
manage it. The lack of sub-threads is annoying, and the lack of message
context makes it hard to know what messages to pay attention to.
Recently, the open source javascript library jQuery moved away from Google
Groups for a lot of these same reasons...to Zoho forums.
I did some research and found that a Zoho forum to support our group would
cost $75/month, and incur a one-time $500 fee to migrate all of the existing
data (messages, threads, and even users) from Google Groups to Zoho. There's
even an option to interact with Zoho via e-mail for those of us that like
this.
The pros:
- Much better organization of our knowledge. The ability to set message
topics to things like question, introduction, idea would be HUGE
for
this group.
- Easier on-boarding for new members
- Better spam moderation tools
The cons:
- It's not free
- Since it's not free, somebody needs to pay for it, which means
somebody is ultimately a keyholder
The cons aren't huge, but they do need to be addressed.
I think this could be a very valuable evolution of this discussion forum
that we all love so much. What say you, the coworking group?
-Alex
/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia
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