On Sun, 2024-03-10 at 22:29 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
It shortly became clear that the user experience of interacting with Discourse via email was significantly worse than a traditional mailing list, so a bunch of us set up a new list (evolution-users@lists.osuosl.org) where we continue on our merry way. The Discourse instance still exists (the two mechanisms are entirely separate with no cross-posting between them), but traffic on the mailing list is noticeably greater than on the forum, which I think says something.
Actually, I always preferred usenet/newsgroups to any of these. It was a vastly superior way of handling lots of messages, threads, and different groups. But one problem was that so many people access them through a very badly designed email client that didn't do news properly (Outlook).
Two large problems with the quick-to-use schemes (typically web forums) was that you (a) still don't avoid 100 people asking the same question (they don't read FAQs, and many FAQ collections are hideous to use), and (b) they don't stick around and contribute as their skill levels improve. It's hit and run, 100 times over.