[OT] How We Discuss Things

John Hinsley jhinsley at telinco.co.uk
Wed Aug 1 07:10:12 UTC 2001


dshafer at yahoo.com wrote:
> 
> Let me clarify a couple of things.
> 
> First, I'm not advocating eliminating the mailing list at all, just adding a discussion baord to >it.
> 
> Second, any decent discussion board these days allows you to participate via email in both >directions: receiving and replying. So really a discussion board -- done right, at least -- is a >strict superset of a mailing list with the added ability to deal with threads, archiving, keeping >discuissions on topic, filtering, etc.

Thinking about it, a php wizard should be able to put something together
which both pulls stuff off the email list and sends stuff to it from a
discussion board (the same thing could be done for a newsgroup too) this
would be great. But, as someone pointed out, the real trick is to make
sure stuff doesn't get replicated. If that could be done (it may well be
that someone has already done it: anyone thinking of writing such an
application should post to the MySQL/php/etc. lists before putting
fingers to vi) it'd be tremendous. 

Would this be acceptable to everyone?


> 
> I agree that absent an email "push" many people won't participate even in communities they value. It's a real paradox for those of us who love and live in discussion board land but it's real.
> 
> --- In squeak at y..., John Hinsley <jhinsley at t...> wrote:
> > Dan Shafer wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > I don't subscribe to the list by email any longer (though I spent
> > > the past year doing so) because I found it too cluttered an
> > > experience, regardless of whether I used the digest or dealt with
> > > individual emails. Following threads was very difficult at best and
> > > filtering out topics in which I was not interested proved all but
> > > impossible.
> >
> > Ah, I wondered where you'd gone ;-)

I wasn't just joking: I'm sure I'm not the only one who misses your
contributions.

> > I think Rosemary makes the point beautifully:
> >
> > > The issue, I think, is having a variety of tools for different mindsets
> > > that captures the same material.
> >
> > For me, that's the issue: all the tools must make the material available
> > to *all* the others, otherwise we effectively dilute the community.
> > Otherwise, well, I quite like bulletin boards.
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > John
> >


And cheers again!

John
-- 
******************************************************************************
Marx: "Why do Anarchists only drink herbal tea?"
Proudhon: "Because all proper tea is theft."
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