On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 01:26:48AM -0700, Terry Lynch wrote:
> P.S.  Off topic, but I am wondering why PLUG communicates in this, at 
> least imho, archaic and inefficient manner.

You're right, email is *so* old-fashioned. ;-)

> Why not a forum?

Not to sound flippant, but *why* a forum?  Every one that I've seen is
much more cumbersome to use than email.

And with a forum, you have to keep going and checking.  Email comes to
you.  (There are only two web pages I check on any regular basis, more
than daily.  If the PLUG discussion media went solely web-based, it
wouldn't be one of them.)  Sure, you could have the forum software email
you when there's a new post or a reply to your post, but then what does
that become, other than a mail list with a horrible message editor?

With a mailing list, I get my own copy of the message, which I can feed
through procmail, save in its own folder, have for later reference and
easy searching (Mutt for simple searches, chains of grepmail commands
for more complex stuff), my own copy for the above purposes in case the
server crashes, etc.  I can read message after message without waiting
for the web server to answer a request for *each* and *every* message.
I can retrieve the messages and read them without having to be connected
to the Internet.  Messages that I've read are marked as read, and
message I haven't read are marked as new.  I can hit tab to read the
next new message.  If your mail client is even moderately capable, it
can display threads.

I suppose that well-written forum software could address maybe half of
these problems, but it still doesn't buy anything over a mailing list,
IMO.  

> Are the administration/resources not available?

I don't think that it would really take many more resources for a forum,
other than the initial setup.  I suppose that if it were preferred, the
Nuke software on the main PLUG web site could be used for this purpose.
Speaking for myself, though, I would dislike putting in the extra effort
to participate if this were web-based rather than email-based.

List software filtering messages from people who aren't subscribed?
Check.  Google-friendly public archive?  Check.  It's just my humble
opinion, but email is so flexible that it can do just about everything
that the web can do in this context, and do it more efficiently too.
Only thing we don't get is standard graphical emoticons and the ability
to inline images in our posts (unless you're sending messages in HTML,
which is frowned on), which most on this list would consider to be a
feature.

> Personally I'd much prefer a forum but maybe that's just me...

Have you considered starting one?  I'm being serious.  I would imagine
(although I can't speak for them) that the web person/team would provide
a link.  And perhaps I'm just a curmudgeonly old SOB and people will
prefer your forum over the email list. ;-)

-- 
Bill Jonas    *    bill@billjonas.com    *    http://www.billjonas.com/
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your front door.  You step
into the Road,  and if you don't keep your feet,  there  is  no knowing
where you might be swept off to."  --  Bilbo Baggins