On or before 16/12/2005, at 7:58, various people wrote in relation to the old question of forum vs mailing list.
After a few years on the RunRev Use and Improve lists I switched to digest mode which cleaned my mailbox a bit but took away the ability to see messages in a timely manner. A few months ago I observed that there were so many new users asking and answering questions that I had no great need (or perhaps ability) to contribute and nothing to ask for myself at the time. I considered this a triumph for Rev, evidence of both a growing user base and increasing sophistication rather than it formerly being a mix of the deeply knowledgeable and the deeply inexperienced.
This week, tackling an SQL database for the first time, I had need of assistance (although the problem naturally proved to be my own) and was impressed to see Chris Bohnert and Mark Wieder both take the trouble to test my code and respond very helpfully. I have no fears for the constructive quality of the readership and contributions. It was also a bit of a homecoming, to see (for example) Klaus and Richmond being their very different selves.
So, to the actual topic here which is the medium for the discussions. On one of the occasions this debate ran a few years ago, I found the mailing list format easy to manage and use and agreed that it was preferable to forum software. The content was not very voluminous then. In the past 6-12 months I have spent much of my time on another list, on a wholly unrelated topic, using forum software. It employs Discus which is reputed by some to be not the greatest piece of forum software. Despite that supposed disadvantage, I find it to be vastly superior to the mailing list in every significant respect with key gains in responsiveness, coherence and time management.
The notion, recently expressed by one highly respected member here, that a forum obliges trolling material or does not allow casual integration of list review with other work, is probably born of a lack of knowledge of the alternative. These are precisely the problems I find in a mailing list whereas a forum simplifies and expedites working with the list.
Firstly, topics are broadly categorised based on input from the users. Secondly, a single button brings up in tree format every post made since you yourself last checked, and no others. Additional to the topic/thread categorisation, the hierarchy gives you crucial information on author and the first line of content. Using a tabbed browser you quickly pick out the items of interest and review or respond to them. Timeliness is superior because you manage the material in bulk when you wish to without waiting for a digest to turn up or alternatively being bombarded with irrelevant messages. If you wish to trace material there is a powerful built-in search facility. You can also immerse yourself in a topic or thread from the start for learning purposes, and having learned will most probably use the Posts ["since I last checked"] feature. You can use basic web text styling for clarification without tripping over mail reader limitations and easily add diagrams or pictures (size and density restricted) where relevant. It also facilitates creation of informative user profiles, although in the forums I use I do prefer the one which excludes signature lines within the post (additional to author identification in the left column) as completely useless clutter.
I guess these advantages have all been discussed before, but I wish to emphasise their superiority in my practical experience. No-one expects everyone to favour a change but from what I am reading at least some of the pro-mail-list group are going to be pleasantly surprised when the inevitable change occurs. Whether RunRev manages a forum of its own, blesses an existing forum, or abandons the whole thing to the market is something on which I choose not to have an opinion at the moment but I agree that one of the alternatives they are doubtlessly considering needs to be taken up.
Sorry about the length of post. Perhaps I have indulged myself in compensation for having been away for a while.
cheers David _______________________________________________ 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
