[Wolves] Badly in need of a forum?

[Steve Parkes]

desperately trying to leave this one alone now but this message requires 
an answer

Deusiah wrote:

>Your main thing against them seems to be their size? 
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>Perhaps you should take a look at punBB, that's a forum coded properly
>with a neat CSS layout and very small pages sizes.
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it doesn't matter how well coded they are each message will be larger 
because of the formating used.  A well coded semantic bb system will 
still have more markup than content that's not true with anything but 
the smallest of email messages.  At least on the first page you will 
need to pull down the css and that's going to be the size of a weeks 
worth of email so the size thing still stays.

>You can turn post
>editing off, threads are displayed in an email client but not half as
>nicely that's a matter of preference though. 
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both mediums are textual so no extra formating should be required.

>I have a large enough
>account only I was speaking in general terms, you can't expect
>everyone to have a large enough account. Using Google as a search
>engine for threads is not as good as using a forum search engine for
>one it's not up to date with the latest posts.
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your mail client will search posts you have received, google is for 
people who aren't signed up ;-)

>Forums are accessible in my opinion, If I think they are I simply have
>a different option. 
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I have a professional opinon why forums are badly accessible.  I think 
you have a different definition for accessible perhaps you are confusing 
it with usable?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessible describes accessibility and 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_accessibility describes computer 
accessiblity.  Web forums fail to be accessable on so many levels but I 
do not say they are not usable. 

Forums also suck on a usability front as well ;-) but I think that's 
what you mean by accessibility.

>As for the push pull argument I don't think that's a strong point. You
>open your email client as opposed to opening your web browser? I
>wouldn't say the latter was harder.
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my mail client is always on and pulls content from my server every few 
mins.  I don't have to think, I wonder if anyone is asking any 
interesting questions on the wolves lug forum?  They just appear ready 
sorted, ready threaded and ready spam filtered into a mailbox.  I can 
then pick and choose what I deal with.  I don't have to think, 'I wonder 
if anyone is asking questions on a forum that I can answer and look like 
a big shot infront of the other people who read the forums?', I don't 
have to actively look for anything.  It's entirely passive on my part 
because the mailing list pushes content my way.

The reason web forums are so full of bad advice is because the people 
most likely to hand around on web forums answering questions are the 
least likely to really understand the answer.  The reason Gentoo gets 
the piss took out of it so much is nothing to do the with distro, which 
is well thought out and executed, it's to do with the pillocks that hang 
around on forums talking so much crap and showing off how little they 
really know about how things work.

Web forums don't work in a technical environment, web forums don't work 
when you require a 'hacker elite' to pop out of the wood work once in a 
while and provide an authorith answer, and web forums are a barrier for 
forming relationships online.  These things have been pointed out time 
and time again in hundreds of mailing lists across the world.  I'm not 
telling you can't use a forum to get answers to your questions I'm just 
pointing out don't expect the most authorith answer in that medium.  
There aren't forums for kernel development that's done via mailing lists ;-)

don't get me wrong, I have argued in the past frequently that the lug 
isn't as accessible as it could be for newbies but I think a forum is a 
step backwards.

sparkes

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