Re: [GZG] Re: Anyone out there???

[Samuel Penn <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 11 July 2006 17:36, Roger Burton West wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 09:33:19AM -0700, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
> >Ah, I see we have a different definition of threading then. Then by your
> >definition yes, forums don't do that kind of threading. In fact, I'm glad
> >they don't. I find that kind of branching discussion the most annoying
> >possible. That's what starting a new thread is for once the idea is
> >brought up.
>
> One of the fundamental problems with a web forum is that everyone is
> forced to read the discussion the way the software author intended.
> Personally I think SquirrelMail is a horrible email client, but I'm not
> trying to stop you from using it if that's what you want to do.

Know of any good alternatives? Squirrel is good enough to allow me to
read my home email when I'm not at home, but I really would like something
better.

The big advantage of email is, as you say, everyone can choose how to
read it. I don't have to put up with the quirks of yet another piece of
forum software just to read one single list. If you don't like threading,
you can switch it off. If you do, you can switch it on. Decent mail clients
have filtering, kill files, searching and archiving facilities you don't
see on web forums. The old excuse of wanting to be able to read a mailing
list from work no longer cuts it given the wide variety of webmail options
out there.

Web forums are good when there's a lot of traffic which you want to
dip into occasionally for an answer to something (the Gentoo forums for
example). Otherwise I find a single forum can take as much time to catch
up on as the dozen or so mailing lists I'm on.

A web forum also requires yet another login and password.

> I can't stop you from proceeding with this destructive course. I can and
> will say that I will not use any proposed forum unless it is also
> accessible by SMTP or NNTP.

This attitude seems to be common amongst the old school of people who
remember even what NNTP is (yeah, I still read Usenet). I've seen lists
get a forum alternative before, and generally the result is that the
list dies (no idea what happened to the forums, since I never read
them...).


-- 
Be seeing you,                         http://www.glendale.org.uk
Sam.                        
              IM: samuel.penn@xxxxxxxxxx or samuel.penn@xxxxxxxxx
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