[ic] Re: FORUM - instead of Mailing List

[Jason Kohles]

On Sat, Dec 29, 2001 at 07:25:38PM +0800, ako pia wrote:
> 
> LOTS-O-EMAIL
> With the Forum, you wouldn't have ANY email. Plus, the forum is much more organized. 
> 
I think you are missing the point.  I WANT it as email, the forum is not as
organized as my email is, I can't filter the forum, and I can't take the
forum with me on my laptop.

> TECHNICAL QUESTIONS
> The technical questions I think should really be posted at the forum. It's so much easier to find the replies and follow the lines of reasoning. Plus, the answers can be added to a knowledge base or FAQ really easily and searched very quickly.
> 
I completely disagree, with email I can tag a thread to be watched, and I can
search all the email I've ever received in a matter of seconds.  As I've said
before, if your mail client can't follow threads then you need a new mail
client, you don't need to try and replace the whole system to deal with the
inadequacies of your own software choices.

> ORGANIZATION
> The bottom line is that once you've tried a good forum system, everything else pales by comparison. It's the level of organization that is the key. Everything all at one location in an orderly manner. There's just no substitute that I am aware of.
> 
That's your opinion, and one I do not share for the reasons I've covered
above, and many others, not the least of which is that a decent mail client
does a much better job of organization by letting the reader, rather than the
site administrator, determine how that information should be organized.

> I certainly am not trying to step on anybody's toes, but the forum scripts are so good these days that you'll really like them once you try them. The old types of forums (which are still used by some folks) are almost as frustrating as mailing lists, but go over to Interchangeville.com, register, and then throw in a question or two, or respond to some, and you'll start to get used to it. It's great.
> 
I did try it, for one thing postnuke generates some really hideous
non-compliant HTML that makes many of the threads unreadable in Mozilla.  At
the time I tried it there were about 60 messages in the forum, and it took
nearly 40 minutes to read them all with all of the navigation required to go
through the forum format.  Reading 60 messages in email generally takes me
less than 5 minutes, and when I respond I can use a decent editor rather
than an html textarea.

> Also, the fact that Anton and his folks are building a KB is super news. Imagine, all kinds of good stuff in a single location, all nicely organized, edited, etc. If this gets put together right, it's gonna be great!
> 
We already have all kinds of good stuff in a single location, nicely organized
and edited at http://interchange.redhat.com/.

-- 
Jason Kohles                                 jkohles@redhat.com
Senior System Architect                      (703)786-8036 (cellular)
Red Hat Professional Consulting              (703)456-2940 (office)