Re: [GSAS-Member] GSAS forum? - I second that emotion...

[Matt Staroscik <matt@wrongcrowd.com>]

This comes up once in a while and there are strong feelings on either side
of the issue.

While I love forums, I don't think we should use one here. My reasons are--

The forum will have to be installed and maintained by someone (Erik I
assume) and while that is not a crushing workload, it shouldn't be
disregarded.

It's also a greater burden on the server than an email list. Server load and
bandwidth may not be issues, Erik can tell us.

Should the forum go away someday, for some reason, its archives will also be
lost, because without the forum software running there is no way to search
the old data. The mailing list is a little more robust that way since the
archives are text.

Though you can set up an RSS feed to keep track of forum activity, it's not
a push notification in the way email is. Despite being a net junkie in all
ways, I don't use RSS at *all *and I bet a lot of other people here don't
either. So, to move to the forum you'd be requiring at least one new habit
for some people, or two if they aren't forum junkies already.

IMHO, the only way a forum could work is if the email list was transitioned
to announce only and chat was done in the forum. Otherwise you just dilute
the pool of participants.

[Semi-related topic: there is an interesting free web tool at
http://www.ning.com/. With it you can set up a web site with social features
for your club. For those who do not care to run their own unix boxes it
looks like a nice alternative. See http://www.unifiedteamdiving.com/ for an
example of what it can do.]

My $0.02, and I am sure others' cents will follow.

MS

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:21 PM, f.padge206 <padge206@gmail.com> wrote:

> Greetings. I even have the messages 'digested' and have been seeing more
> than usual lately. Forums, to me, are more easily browsed and searched. and
> if you want instant notifications you can always set up an RSS feed to
> notify you of posts.
>
> A forum would also clean up the messages a little, as the emails seem to
> get
> messy once 2 or 3 people respond to each other, leaving the original
> message
> quoted.
>
> so, as far as setting up a forum goes (and if I remember right, this came
> up
> at least once before sometime last year) ... I second that emotion.
>
> thanks and happy new year.
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