Neal Becker Software Package..?

[jdow]

On 2012/01/07 06:12, Tim wrote:
> On Fri, 2012-01-06 at 20:48 +0100, Christopher Svanefalk wrote:
>> Forums, when implemented properly, are superior to any kind of mailing
>> list.
>
> Haven't seen one, yet...  ;-p
>
> Yes, they have the potential for archiving and search, but having to go

Generally the search facility is dreadful. I've never seen one that returns
expected results.

> to them, instead of messages coming to you, makes them vastly inferior
> for many people.  I'm certainly not going to log onto half a dozen, or
> more, webforums, nightly, to keep track of things that I easily do with
> mailing lists.
>
> *Different*, yes.  Lots of potential features, yes.  Superior, *no*.

One thing of note is that the only good forums I've been on have active
moderation by people who are not on power trips. Good forums also have
good threading, in with two different threading priorities (follow strand
to the end or follow strands by time of posting).

The best "forum-like" tool I've ever used so far is deceased now. It was
easy to setup what you want to follow and navigate its text only interface
with simple return key presses until you were done with all unread messages.
This also made it handy for downloading to your own machine all the current
unread messages and reading them locally any old way you want, much the same
as mailing lists. In fact the tool had a built in functions to facilitate
off-line readers. HTML based tools are all somewhat clumsy by comparison.
And mailing lists are also a tough clumsy in different ways, as well.

Nothing's perfect. I will note that I drift away, usually in a state of
acute frustration, from forums, such as Mozilla uses, and return to email
and mailing lists as a preference. But, then, I am very "data oriented"
and despise "cute" triumphing over "utility." So forum gewgaws such as
avatar images, fancy formatting, and all that nonsense tend to drive me
away. They waste my time too much.

And, of course, "YMMV". It would be interesting to adapt a good forum
based tool so that it also could be accessed as a mailing list.

{^_^}