On Mar 5, 2009, at 3:39 PM, Kristian Kielhofner wrote:
A bunch of telephony geeks and a 1900 number - what could go wrong?
Anyways, I too don't understand why people prefer forums.
I follow dozens of mailling lists and a half a dozen e-mail addresses without ever leaving my mail client. My mail client happens to be gmail, btw:
- Much more customization, filtering, etc possible than any "web forum" - "Local" copies of all messages - Search is awesome, ever hear of Google? ;)
Web forums are good when you have to serve ads to people to get paid. Other than that they are certainly not the ideal tool for the job.
Besides (and don't take this as an insult) - have you ever compared the web forums to the mailing lists for projects that offer both? Say what you want to say about mailing lists and IRC but the reality (usually) is the l33tz all hang out here and web forums (almost always) end up with the same groups of n00bz circling around and around trying to figure out how to accomplish even the most basic of tasks.
Obviously that can go both ways but as a rule of thumb the people that are usually in a position to help others typically prefer mailing lists (probably for some of the reasons I cited above). Or maybe they are just old gray hairs too stuck in their ways. I don't know. ;)
I previously thought the same about the insiders always preferring mailing lists but I have a friend who is a core member of the cacti developers and they apparently prefer the forums to the lists, but have both. Food for thought at least. MIke