Re: debian forum

[Kamaraju Kusumanchi <kamaraju@bluebottle.com>]

On Thursday 21 September 2006 15:17, S. M. Ibrahim (Lavlu) wrote:
> today at the time of searching http://debian.org get a link
> http://forums.debian.net
>
> but, there number of registed user is too few "We have *7054* registered
> users"
>
> why debian not making a official forum for debian-user??


According to http://lists.debian.org/stats/ the subscribe count for d-u is 
around 2900 which is way less compared to the forum subscribers. So the 
number for forum.debian.net is definitely not low. That said, I would like to 
rant why I prefer mailing lists over forums.

I was a mailing list user for a long time, then shifted to forums for some 
time and then came back to mailing lists quickly. Many reasons are stated 
before by other posters in this thread. Here are some other main drawbacks of 
forum IMHO.

a) quoting messages is really really tough in a forum interface.

Can't really stress how important this is for a meaningful discussion. Becomes 
essential if the discussions are somewhat lengthy.

b) moderators excersize too much control on the content.

While this does not happen that much in forums.debian.net it does happen in 
other forums that I am part of (ex:- forums.spamcop.net) and is really 
annoying. Moderators can literally move around topics, delete topics, merge 
posts with one another at will. This might be liked by some, but I hate it. I 
do not want someone else to impose their aesthetics on me. I like to be 
incharge of the contents and deal with it myself.

c) Cannot use vim to compose emails.

If I am using a mailing list interface, I can use kmail to read my emails, and 
vim to write replies. In forums I cannot do that. I am being restricted by 
their st**id editor.

d) read some emails now and read some other emails later.

I usually like to read all the new posts and help as much as I can. I read say 
100 emails at a time, go do some real work which pays me, then come back and 
read another 100 emails etc., In forum, it is tough to do this. There is a 
facility to do something like "view new posts since last visit" and that's 
it. The newness of the posts will be lost if I log out or close my browser or 
loose internet conneciton etc., In the end, I wont be able to read all the 
emails and that I don't like!

e) forums need X to be running

This is self explanatory...
What if your X is broke and you need support?
what if you "listen" to emails while driving to work instead of reading?

hope that clarifies why most of the expertise is on the mailing lists instead 
of on the forums. Sorry to discourage but I dont think forums will ever 
replace mailing lists ...

raju

-- 
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/
http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/