Am Wed, 25. January 2006 23:25 schrieb Jan Karjalainen:
I think there is a need for a forum, for a couple of reasons:
- The ability to easily search for answers. When you get a reply stating "this was discussed in December, search the list", a newbie really doesn´t have a clue how or where to search. Compare this to the search funtionality of a forum. Hhhm, I would say this is only a matter of postprocessing an information channel. Never mind if it is a forum or a mail list. The core need is to make information available. This can be done by moving interesting answers to a faq, like it is done for the german suse-users list. Or by putting good and interesting answers to the openSUSE wiki or the SDB
- Dial-up connections aren´t fast enough for downloading a couple of hundred mails each day, many of which you don´t have any interest in. As mentioned above, just a matter of postprocessing. This could be done by a mail2news gateway or a indexed and browsable mail list archive.
- Familiarity. Almost everyone has visited a forum, and even participated in discussions on one.
Looking at what a forum does under technical aspects it is not more than a web based mailing list archive which has aa gui which comes along as a news list. What is left is that another information channel needs additional reccources and additional advertising. Just like presenting another newspaper publication. So whats left is the decission wether to have a new information channel which needs additional and in the end redundant reccources and manpower or to find a way to make the given information offered by a mail list accessible in a more pleasant way, especially for new users.
Just my $0.02.... just my 0,0163€ :)
regards, Thomas