[MLB-WIRELESS] Mailing list Vs Forum?

[Jeremy Lunn]

On Sat, Jun 29, 2002 at 01:38:56PM +1000, Andrew Dean wrote:
> Is there an advantage to running a mailing list rather than say a web based
> messageboard/forum type thing?

Web based forums aren't as convenient.  Some people may not even
remember to check them and as a result questions would go unanswered.

> - It would reduce the load and bandwidth used on the servers as it wouldn't
> have to send out an e-mail to the (i have no idea how many people are
> subscribed to this list) XXX people subscribed to the list....

On the otherhand it'd increase load and bandwidth for messages that get
read by everyone that would be subscribed to the list.  Reading through
every message in a forum would be much slower and would have a higher
load than mailing someone the messages.

> - You could track the threads that interesed you, I know i skip through some
> messages, mainly the political cra... stuff... when i know this is important
> but not to me

If you have a decent mail user agent that supports threading then you
can do that anyway.

> - The different mailing lists you have setup - you could make these
> sepereate forums and maybe give everyone else read-only access to them so we
> can see whats going on? etc...

Could use online archives.

Perhaps the ideal thing to do would be to have an NNTP server with
newsgroups that are gatewayed to a mailing list and have a web based
NNTP client.  That way, those who want to use a newsclient can do so,
those who went to use the web can do so and those who want to the
mailing lists could also do so.  Everyone would be happy that way.

-- 
Jeremy Lunn
Melbourne, Australia
http://www.jabber.org/ - the next generation of Instant Messaging.

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