On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 09:17:46AM +0930, Arthur Marsh wrote: > > Back on topic, a web forum can be good if it is easy to find relevant > information (and gets indexed by Google et al) e.g. the broadband site > www.whirlpool.net.au which does have very active moderation. > > Given proper archiving (that is indexed by search engines), a collection > of mailing lists / newsgroups can enable rapid searching for relevant > information and a manageable way to keep up with new postings. I guess that my biggest problem with webforums is that to me, they discourage lengthy discussions. That is, look at some of the longer threads that have occurred on this list in the past. IIRC, we have some recent threads which have extended into the 400-500 message range. I realize that some were OT, but the point is that in a forum it can be impossible to tell which messages to read. You have to read them all. In a client that does proper threading, you see something like this: -> parent message |->reply1 |->reply2 | |->reply2.1 |->reply3 | |->reply3.1 | |->reply3.2 | | |->reply3.2.1 | |->reply3.3 |->reply4 Of course, the timestamps of the messages could put them such that all the first generation replies occur before all the second generation replies or something like that. The point is that if a particular subthread is not interesting to you, you skip over it or delete it. In a flat forum-type view, you esentially have to read every message, including what was quoted, because you don't really know if posting #59 is quoting posting #43 or #17 or #8. In a forum, once the discussion grows past what can fit into one or two pages, I generally don't even bother, unless I am exceptionally interested or have no choice (e.g., trying to solve a problem and it is only discussed on linuxquestions.org or something. If people want to prefer a forum over a mailing list, then they are free to do so. However, I think that people who value their time and effort more tend to prefer the mailing list as it represents a much more efficient way to communicate. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com
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