Do you prefer mailing lists or web based forums?

[Walter Dnes]

On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 11:47:50PM -0500, Daniel Armstrong wrote

> Opinion here seems to heavily favour mailing lists over web-based forums.
> Why is that?

  The fact that you're asking this question indicates that you're on
broadband.  A couple of years ago I spent a few months on dialup.
Usenet (NNTP) is actually my preferred option.  Mailing lists, because
they emulate usenet, are a 2nd choice.  With usenet or email, you can
log on, pull down all the messages, and log off.  Reading and composing
messages can be done offline, at leisure.  But with a web board, you
have to keep connected for a couple of hours.  If you don't want to miss
phone calls, that means getting another phone line.

  Reading usenet or email offline is an instant experience.  You go to
the next message, and it pops up on your screen.  Have you ever tried to
follow a heavy discussion on ZDNet?  You spend more time waiting for the
messages to redraw than you do reading, even with broadband.  And the
software has limits on the length of individual threads.  This results
in popular discussions being chopped just as they get interesting.

> Contrast that with something like the debian.user mailing list that
> gets over 4000+ post a month on average. Talk about trying to take a
> sip of water from a firehouse! That volume of email actually dissuades
> me from subscribing.

  Non-sequitur.  A low-traffic web board is easier to follow than a high
traffic usenet group or email list.  Well... like... duhhhh.  Please,
let's compare apples to apples.  I would *MUCH* rather read a high
traffic usenet or email discussion than a high traffic web board.  Have
you ever tried following a high traffic discussion on Slashdot or ZDNet,
*ESPECIALLY* on dialup?  Try it, you won't like it.

  If you're more entranced by GUI than by message content, you can read
email or usenet with a GUI reader, and it'll look like a web board.  I
prefer having my entire 80x48 text console available, with *MY CHOICE OF
FONT AND TEXT COLOURS*.  I do *NOT* want half my screen cluttered up
with navigation menus and subframes.

> I enjoy the TLUG mailing list, but I think beyond a handful of
> members that a web-based forum offers advantages - easily searchable
> and posts are indexed by search engines...

  Ditto for mailing lists and usenet news.  It's called Google.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org> In linux /sbin/init is Job #1
My musings on technology and security at http://tech_sec.blog.ca
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