[SWLUG] IRC

[Steve Hill]

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006, Dave Cridland wrote:

>> 2. As we have a suitable website, would it not be appropriate to add a
>> message board (ie phpBB) to it? Advantages would include searchability
>> of topics, reduced cross-talk, less messy quoting, no messages lost in
>> the inbox, and so on...
>> 
> Yeah... But all the advantages you quote there are the property of your 
> mailstore and the interface to it. Personally, I infinitely prefer the 
> searchability I get with keeping SWLUG in an IMAP store, and searching it 
> with an IMAP client - I do have the advantage I can code in the search 
> facilities I need.

The advantages of mailing lists over web forums for me are quite simple:

1. I get a consistent interface of my choosing (PINE) to access all my 
mailing lists rather than using many different web forums which I have to 
configure separately and have no consistent interface.

2. I don't have to go out of my way to look for new messages, they're all 
right here in my mail client.

3. It's really fast - fractions of a second to open a message rather than 
~10 seconds to open a message on a web forum.

4. Proper threading - this is something most web forums seem to lack.

5. No stupid animated smilies to distract me.

The advantages which were given for using phpBB were:

1. searchability - Having the actual messages available to you rather than 
a web interface opens up much more of a variety of searching methods using 
software of your choosing rather than simply a keyword search on the 
forum.

2. reduced cross-talk - Not entirely sure what is meant by this, but in 
my experience most forums seem to have particularly poor support for 
threading which makes following a conversation particularly hard.

3. less messy quoting - Again, not sure what's meant by this - I find 
quoting in emails (that aren't top-posted) very easy to read.  In many 
forums people often seem to reply without quoting and coupled with the 
lack of threading this can lead to confusion as to exactly what they are 
answering

4. no messages lost in the inbox - If you don't want the messages to 
arrive in your inbox you need to filter them into separate mailboxes.  The 
likes of Evolution and Thunderbird will let you do this easilly and 
failing that you can use procmail.  TBH I find the SWLUG list small enough 
to have land in my inbox but most other mailing lists I'm on get filtered 
into other boxes by procmail.

-- 

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence