>Thoughts now??
>Jon (GZG)
Hi John,
Another lurker here, but also with an opinion :)
I would very much prefer a mailing list to a forum. I have been in more than a few miniature- and rpg-related mailing lists that migrated to forums because the publishers thought they would be more active that way.
From my experience, I have seen that in most cases (not all) the forums started their lifes with a lot of activity (more than the mailing list before) but eventually died. So, from a list with low activity (say less than a dozen messages a week, often much less) appeared a forum that had dozens of messages a day, for a few days, but after a while did not even get one or two messages a month (if that at all).
I for one could not afford to go to a single forum for every of those mailing lists and follow with the threads, simply for lack of time: checking my email and downloading the messages for later I can do in minutes, but accesing the forums for each company to see if there are new messages or threads would be quite more time-consuming, and impossible in some cases (I am quite sure the firewalls at work would not like me checking certain sites... that are quite evidently unrelated to work).
I do not mind low activity mailing lists, if the messages that do come are interesting and informative. The GZG mailing lists have at times (I have been subscribed for a few years, even if I do not usually mail at all) been quiet, but the debates have more than made up for it. Even the most exalted ones :)
However, I think a forum in the GZG web page could be quite useful for certain things: making announcements (the front page has most of them, but the old ones are sometimes useful to have), allowing people to post their own announcements (local games?), and so. And the lists have at times been a bit faulty (a couple of times I have received messages with special offers a month too late). If possible (money-wise, and time-wise... forums do need some maintenance) a forum can be a nice addition. Just make sure that there are sheep-related avatars on the forums!!!!!!!!
But I simply cannot foresee the same discussions in a forum that are here on the mailing list. The mail is just too handy and easy to use, and if because of that handiness I have to read some exalted messages, well, that's the price. In general this has been one of the most civil lists I know.
My 2 cents
David
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