Re: [mh] Creating a forum instead of a mailing list for MH

[William H. M. <ma...@mc...>]

On Sep 26, 2008, at 1:18 AM, PetaMem R&D wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 09:01:06PM -0400, Neil Cherry wrote:
>>> What does everyone else think?  Am I being too stubborn about the  
>>> mailing list?
>>
>> Your being too stubborn, do a search on the mail list on SF to
>> see past attempts.
>
> actually the normal evolution of communication within a growing
> project is:
>
> 1. email & cc within a bunch of developers
> 2. mailing list
> 3. several mailing lists (developers, users, various topics)
> 4. forum
>
> Many projects keep their size (of interested people) below that
> certain threshold that makes a forum mandatory. But some eventually
> grow out of the ML bounds.
>
> I do not know if MH is ready for 4. (given the traffic I suppose
> no). But I personally find it quite stubborn to act like "this
> proposal has been refused once, from then on it has to be refused for
> all eternity - you're stubborn."
>
> Maybe in some time this project becomes useful (pun pun) or even
> professional (pun pun pun) and might attract a wider audience. It
> won't work then without a forum - believe me.

In my opinion MH is not even ready for 3, let alone 4. The volume of  
traffic is simply not there.

The interesting difference between people who use email and those who  
use web-based
applications, i.e. forums is largely one of experience and age, and  
maybe platform.

Email  (not to be confused with webmail) is easily filtered and  
controlled by the end user.
A Forum is not. However, it is true that email usage does require a  
greater than "zero" level
of competence on the part of the end user.

Email is "immediate" while a forum requires a separate effort to  
"visit,"  especially if the number
of topics branches excessively.

Email requires no effort on the part of the "maintainers."  Adding and  
deleting list members is an
automated process.

By contrast a Forum requires significant effort on the part of the  
sponsoring entity.  While it is true that
there is no necessity for "subscribing" to a forum, if a forum is  
"open" then it is so full of spam and vitriolic
that any serious use becomes extremely tedious and quickly leads to  
dissatisfaction and lack of use.
While the Forum maintainers can delete these posting and perform  
similar editorial functions, that is what
I mean by the amount of effort needed to run a forum.... much greater  
than "set and forget."

As for the age aspect ... those who have been around the Internet for  
many years instinctively prefer email,
as that is what they not only grew up with, but until very recently,  
email was the only thing which could be
"trusted" to deliver the message. Those who have grown up calling  
things "the web" instead of "the internet"
live inside their web browser, and find it difficult to think in terms  
of other applications.

I suspect that another major contributor to email vs forum is  
"platform."

Anyone operating in a Microsoft environment will clearly find a web  
based environment, i.e. forum, much
superior to anything based on a Microsoft email client.  While anyone  
operating in a Unix-like environment
(Linux, OSX, etc) is much, much more at home using multiple programs  
-- different programs solve different
problems.

And one last point... virtually any forum worth your time today has an  
RSS feed.
Is an RSS announcement different  from an email message?

A Emacs bigot ...

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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