[Tutor] Please use plain text.

[spir]

Le Mon, 6 Apr 2009 22:01:11 +0100,
"Alan Gauld" <alan.gauld at btinternet.com> s'exprima ainsi:

> 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.

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
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