[ODE] Forum debate

[Nicolas Quijano]

Forum means a lot more noise : look at what a discussion of forums vs 
mail does, when the OP was only worried about the archive ;)
It took a repeat that google sees it all for him to notice it amidst 
the "noise"...
People have a tendency to become a lot more/too communal with forums, 
pretty much start to talk about anything but the subject at hand, add 
categories, and pretty soon you find yourself with something that's a 
lot less relevant than it was...
I've found that mailing lists tend to keep the level of conversation / 
signal to noise ratio higher, and same with the effort put into 
questions/answers also seems higher with mailing lists.
Generalization, of course :)
As for the features of forums, well,  I know I'd rather live without....
Most of the better mailing lists I'm on are not available as forums, 
and I think it has a lot to do with their success.
Perceived ease of use and chrome features does not make good content :)
And most important, why fix something that's not broken ?
Remember, this was about the archive not allowing a single download, 
not about mailing lists vs forums.
As there are more than one workaround for that particular problem, why 
fix something that's not broken, and has proved itself invaluable to 
most of us ?
Take care,
Nicolas

On Mercredi, sept 8, 2004, at 19:49 America/Montreal, ttl0 at aber.ac.uk 
wrote:

> Oh yeah I have seen that repository. But like someone else had said. 
> Its
> not really usable. I have to click 30 times to download everything. 
> Unzip
> it ... etc. etc. Its not user freindly whereas a forum would be
>
>
>>> I would prefer a forum. And if a hybrid approach is reletively easy 
>>> to
>>> implement then why not?
>>> I have been using ODE for a little while but I didn't sign up to the
>>> mailing list for quite a while becuase it annoys me getting so much
>>> clutter in my inbox when I am not currently interested in what is 
>>> going
>>> on. True I could subscribe on and off but I would rather there was an
>>> easy
>>> to browse online repository that I could use instead at my leasure.
>>> _________
>>
>>
>> There already is such a repository:
>> http://q12.org/pipermail/ode/
>>
>> My personal preference is also to keep things simple. If ODE 
>> discussion
>> does move to a web-based forum, I suggest we keep emoticons, image
>> signatures, and other assorted gimmickry out. And receiving the 
>> messages
>> in a mailing list should always be an available option.
>>
>> -Chris
>>
>>
>>
>
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