AG Schnozz wrote:
> Agreed. More than once, I've been tempted to offer the services of the
> www.zone-10.com forums to the Oly List, but remember that historically, that
> kind of offer/option has been frowned upon.
>
I guess I'm late enough to this thread that the main issue is already dead.
For me, a mailing list is far easier to use than forums. They are all
limited by constraints of thread orientation and space. The ones lke
dpreview that handle huge volumes by showing only one message at a time
or a thread view with truncated titles only are very difficult to use
for me. The lack of thread discipline makes finding almost stuff hopeless.
The paradigm used on Zone-10 and some wiki forums is nicer than many,
because it shows whole threads of complete messages. Again, though it is
limited by space on the page, and long threads will go into pages, so
it's hard to orient. I think it hasn't become difficult for me simply
'cause there isn't much on it yet.
All on-line forums I've seen are further limited by the need to get a
new response from the server all the time.
Using Thunderbird, and I assume the Outlooks and other mail managers may
be similar, everything is practically instantaneous. When I highlight a
title, the text is displayed below. Sorting by author, subject or date
is instant and by keywords almost so. Typs AG in the little box, and
I've got everything in my in box from you displayed.
And that gets into another huge advantage, post management. I grab all
the OO (or whatever) posts and drag them into the OO folder. One click
and they are all displayed. As I read messages, I can delete those I
don't want to finish or reply to and keep those I want to consider
further, reply to or just keep for some reference or other.
The bottom of my in box is always 'live' with the current, live stuff.
It's so easy to read through a big backlog of posts, delete most, then
go back and reconsider the rest.
So for me, the current form of our forum is the best not because it's
tried and true, or I'm against new stuff, but simply because it works
better and faster for my practical use than any forum format I've seen.
Moose
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