- I made my post completely oblivious that Kevin Miller had weighed in, because I received the digest with his post *after* I made mine. This is not "real-time."
The way email works, I get many posts in different order than they were sent. This does not happen with forums to the same degree but still multiple people can be composing answers at the same time not being aware that somebody else is answering, so there is some crosstalk as well. I don't see it as a big deal.
Digests for a high-volume list like this are sort of pointless except for people who really want to just scan them. I think the filtering is a better way to do it.
- If you look at the list archive, you see that this thread (and most others) are broken up into dozens of pieces so that it's quite hard to follow who is responding to what.
Threading is indeed an issue for emails. However, that feature can also be a minus for online forums in a different way: the forum discussions are usually divided into content areas, topics, sometimes with multiple levels of hierarchy, so people need to subscribe to each individually (to get emails) or need to move around the different forums a lot. There is also often more repeatition of different things in different areas. Some active areas fill up with new threads so quickly that one has to page to see older but still new threads. Then, people also often hijack the thread to go into a different direction (or start a new thread to continue), so the title of main entry (seen normally on forum listings) is not always representative. In the end, an average user does not necessarily see more of content than in eail subscription. I even dare say less overall.
- On days when there is high traffic, you get a *lot* of email. This has resulted in me filtering the Use-Revolution list into a folder, which results in reading it less often.
I do not see that visiting you folder to process the accumulated emails is that different from visiting forums and browsing around.
I thought the question was a valid one and I gave my honest opinion.
The bottom line: I see this issue more of personal preference and/or individual workflow issue than one format having advantage over the other. Each has pros and cons.
That said, if Rev could have a system like Tidbits-Talk (http://www.tidbits.com/about/tidbits-talk.html), they could probably make a lot more people happy. That system is based on WebCrossing (with custom extensions) and allows users to participare in either forum and/or email modes. So each users picks what suits them best. Unfortunately, WebCrossing ain't free or cheap and it is not problem-free either.
Robert _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
