On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 05:08:32PM -0500, Kenneth Schneider wrote:
Web forums promotes communication between people no matter what their technical level. Mailing lists very nearly discourage newbies from helping newbies, as mailing lists usually stop this by complaining about the wrong quoting method or posting in HTML, or off-topic.
Just looking for info. Pardon my ignorance.
How is a forum any better than a mailing list. From my stand point you still have to type in some text somewhere and send it off somewhere for other people to respond to hopefully with a helpful answer. Is this not what this list provides currently? I don't see how a mailing list will "discourage newbies" from participating except for the fact that the information on how to subscribe is usually buried somewhere and -not- easily found.
Not better, different. Subscribing is one thing. I can also imagine that there are people out there that do not understand the concept of an emaillist. Also a lot of people think that HTTP _is_ the internet. Furthermore it is completely unimportant how you or I think or expect things. I can only look at the facts and the facts are that people tend to like forums much better. If it is webforums the user wants, then webforums is it that should be provided. Discussing how great mailinglists or Usenet is, is something we can do afterwards. My feeling is that if we want to reach all users we should have webforums. It is not an OR/OR situation. It is an AND/AND situation. I don't like webforums, so I won't participate. For the same reasons other people might not like mailinglists or Usenet and would not want to use them. At this moment, these people do not have a voice and I don't want them NOT to have a voice, just because they like webforums. houghi -- Dare to be naive. -- R. Buckminster Fuller