Do you prefer mailing lists or web based forums?

[Lennart Sorensen]

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 reason I ask is because I am setting up a Drupal-powered
> website and plan to offer a web-based forum. I know from my personal
> browsing habits that when I try out a new linux distro if the site offers
> a web-based forum it is usually the first place I bookmark - the Ubuntu
> Forum, for example, is a great searchable source of info that makes it
> very easy to post or browse around.

Email is plain text (html users can go away please).  I can use whatever
program I like setup however I want it, to manage email.  I can filter
it, sort it, file it away, delete it, etc.  I control it as I see fit.

Web forums are very different.  I have to use a web browser and deal
with forms and clicking buttons, they usually don't work with text
browsers very well, they attract people without even minimal clues about
how to operate things, causing many empty replies (often many in a row)
to things.  Of course a sensible system would require a login each time
you open it, while with email you subscribe once, and it is dealt with.
With the email client I control the interface.  With a web forum,
someone else decides how it works and what the interface is.  They are
usually "wrong". :)  With a web forum it is much harder to keep track of
which messages I have already read, and I can't delete what I don't care
about easily, and I can't save what I do care about easily.  Lousy
interface in general.

> 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.

I am subscribed to many debian mailing lists.  Having a good client that
threads well makes it much easier to deal with.  Having procmail dump
each major list into its own folder is also handy.  I am also subscribed
to lkml and manage to get the useful stuff (useful to me) from there
without a problem.  Single keystroke delete of an entire thread that
doesn't matter to me is essential of course.  So is a good spam filter.

> 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, and the user has more options to manage their
> participation in a site. But I would like to hear from other TLUGers what
> turns them off web-forums?
> 
> Why do *you* prefer mailing lists over web-based forums?

There is nothing to like about web forums.  They don't add any useful
feature to a discussion, and remove many useful features.

Len Sorensen
--
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