[Gmecm] comments on reorganizing lists

Tue Feb 7 16:51:34 UTC 2006

My opinion is probably not of much value since I don't contribute much to
this list, but my preference is for forums.  The big benefit is automatic
context-maintaining archiving and search capability.  Mailing list
archiving is almost worthless, so everyone has to ask the same questions
over and over.  Also, for those of us whose interests are cyclical (I'm
not always involved in an EFI project), mailing list are less apropriate
since we have to keep collecting E-mails or else unsubscribe and basically
lose everything.  Forums let us catch up and also not waste other peoples'
time as much with topics that have already been covered.

With forums you can also post pictures, which comes in handy sometimes. 
Even if you can send pics on the mailing list, the archives will lose
them.

I manage a few lists myself and have found it difficult to convert to the
forum format from lists.  I guess some people just like to have the
content "pushed".  I've had limited success with hybrid mail/forum
systems.  There is an add-on for phpBB called mail2forum that will send
E-mails to the forum and mail out forum posts, but it is very limited in
several ways.  First, all the E-mails will dump into the same board on the
forum, so the typical categorization stuff is not really possible. 
Second, only so much can be done to get the mails into the proper forum
threads.  In the end, an E-mail thread ends up split across multiple forum
threads in many cases.

I ended up using it anyway since I at least got a better archiving
capability out of it, and maybe people will slowly wean over to the forum.

FWIW

> I prefer email. I rarely browse forums, far prefer this style.
>
> Forum with email delivery? That wouldn't be bad.
>
> Scott
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Steve Ravet" <Steve.Ravet at arm.com>
> To: <gmecm at diy-efi.org>; <diy_efi at diy-efi.org>; "efi_332"
> <efi332 at diy-efi.org>; <wbo2 at diy-efi.org>
> Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 11:24 PM
> Subject: [Gmecm] comments on reorganizing lists
>
>
>> I've thought about moving the lists to the forum style format that most
>> other internet groups use -- corral.net, thirdgen, etc.  I've been
>> opposed to this for some time, liking the email format these lists have
>> always used.  So I've put together a list of what I think the pros and
>> cons of each are and I'd like to solicit some discussion and opinions on
>> whether a switch would be good or bad.
>>
>> email pros:
>> 1)  new posts come to your inbox, or can be filtered to another box.
>>
>> email cons:
>> 1)  surprisingly high bandwidth usage
>> 2)  archive/search engine isn't automatic.
>>
>> forum pros:
>> 1)  possibly lower bandwidth
>> 2)  message context always available.  Don't have to depend on included
>> replies or memory to know if the discussion started out about Ford or GM
>> intakes, for example.
>> 3)  archive/searching built in.
>> 4)  sticky posts mean good information doesn't disappear into the
>> archive abyss.
>>
>> forum cons:
>> 1)  overly cute dancing smiley faces
>> 2)  chatty
>> 3)  no digest mode (?)
>>
>> The owner may be able to turn off dancing icons, and I don't know if the
>> chatty-ness of other forums is due to the list membership or encouraged
>> by the format.  An ideal solution may be like yahoo where you can sign
>> up for email delivery of all posts if you want.  Note, I am not
>> suggesting moving the lists to yahoo.
>>
>> If the switch is made I plan on having the same lists available,
>> possibly dropping the diy_wb list since it's very low traffic and on
>> topic for diy_efi.  I don't plan on having a lounge forum.
>>
>> Anyway, if you have an addition to the pros and cons listed above send
>> it, and if you have an opinion on switching send that also.
>>
>> --steve
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
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