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What I would consider a big difficulty with flat text is exactly that
it is flat. There are lots of times, in my experience, when a graphic,
particularly captured ones, can lead to much faster and smarter
solution. I think this list may allow them, but it seems at a delay. My
experience is the opposite of yours with forums. I use Yahoo Groups
fairly often. Although I don't like the advertising present there,
which is pretty minimal, they at least something of a cross between
graphics and text. One can upload images for examination by others.
Some forums and all YGs even allow videos. I've even used videos to
solve some hardware problems. Maybe mail lists should be divided into
segments. Say, one for people who use text and others for whatever
media they are comfortable with. <br>
<br>
spir wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:20090407103249.1ea46ccd@o" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Le Mon, 6 Apr 2009 22:01:11 +0100,
"Alan Gauld" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:alan.gauld@btinternet.com"><alan.gauld@btinternet.com></a> s'exprima ainsi:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Web forums are far less useful than mailing lists for technical groups.
They require internet access and a browser to read them.
Many require a graphical browser so don't work in text mode
terminals. Very few are available via news feeds (and therefore
miss out on the power of newsreaders for effective bulk reading)
and many have quite poor search and archive capabilities.
</pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
The main difference for me is about organisation.
Forums are pre-structured as categories and threads. You constantly need to navigate here and there in an organisation that does not necessarily mirrors the content or your own views. It's often even hard and long just to review new posts. It's very time consuming for few benefit. The so-called 'forum' structure works better as an archive (provided the users use it well) than as... a forum in the basic sense of the term.
With a list on the other hand one gets all news basically as a flat... list. This mirrors what a forum really is: a place where everybody can speak. This also allows a fast review even at hand. Custom selection, filtering, dispatch can be applied manually or automatically on top of this non-structured flow, precisely because it is not pre-structured.
I nearly never visit forums.
Denis
------
la vita e estrany
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<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="76"> Wayne Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.01 Deg. W, 39.26 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)<span
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