On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 01:45:56PM +1200, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
Dan Shafer dshafer@yahoo.com wrote: It seems to me that if we moved from the older mailing list model to a true discussion board or Swiki model for all of our discussions, we'd all be enriched and our experience would be both more effective and more efficient.
AARGH! No! Please! Not another thing where I have to click all over the place. The day I have to use a browser to read Squeak news is the day I unsubscribe.
I agree with this. I've gotten quite soured on web-based discussion of any kind..it just isn't all that effective, for me. I tend to get lost on high-volume web discussion boards (ie Slashdot on a bad day), and I usually skip most of the follow-ups. I would hate to do that here, since the follow ups to any given message tend to be quite interesting!
But I never hear anyone suggest this, which indicates perhaps I am alone in my feeling that this is such an archaic and relatively inefficient way of dealing with such material.
I think the mailing list is a very _efficient_ way to process this material. It's an order of magnitude more pleasant than using a browser.
Yes, I like the mailing list too. Depending on how I'm logged in, I have different ways of viewing it...all my mail gets routed to different MH-style folders. If I'm ssh'd into my machine I use mutt, otherwise I use exmh. (if I'm feeling sadistic I'll use straight MH)
ANYWAY--this issue keeps coming up, it seems. Perhaps the solution would be to come up with more-than-one way to view this list. It would be nice to have alternatives...perhaps a decent web-based front-end could be made to compliment (not replace) the list, as well as NNTP.
It's not impossible...I've been messing around with the Citadel/UX BBS software and it has multiple front-ends to do just this (I'm not suggesting we use Citadel, it's just an example). The WebCit web front-end is quite nice. Citadel can take mailing lists and convert them into USENET-like message boards, which you can view via the text, web or native interface.
Perhaps something like this can be cobbled together in Squeak? We've already got the web capability via Swiki...