On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 03:19:47PM -0700, [email protected] wrote: > What, in your opinion, is the advantage of Forums over the Mailing List?
It's not really advantage over, they serve different purposes. Forums are very nice for: * Drive-by question/answer - you can ask a question or answer one with minimal commitment (subscribing to a mailing list can be an unknown commitment of time.) * A forum is more like "subscribe to one topic" where a list is "subscribe to all topics and mentally filter." * A forum is a lower barrier to entry for a target audience (students and educators using the textbook in a classroom) that is not already invested in FOSS mailing lists. * Forums are nicer for web search, which is important for a community help location. * Forums allow admins/moderators to control threads more tightly - move them, combine them, hide them, block them. A mailing is all or nothing, and you can't selectively block someone from contributing to a specific thread -- all or nothing. For a community, mailing lists and forums work together. Individual parts of the community might use only one or the other for their work, but should be aware of the other and know how to engage there when necessary. - Karsten -- name: Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener team: Red Hat Community Architecture uri: http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki gpg: AD0E0C41
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