[plug] plug mailing list vs Forum

[James Devenish]

Hi,

In message <380-220046424115017375 at westnet.com.au>
on Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 07:50:17PM +0800, johnmorcos wrote:
> I was wondering what everyone thought about us having a forum instead
> of a mailing list.

If by "forum" you mean NNTP newsgroup then yes, I would encourage some
form of NNTP<->SMTP gateway action. If you mean "web forum", then I hope
people will discourage the idea :-P

> i think that the mailing list should only be used for say the topic
> of the day or mass announcements etc.

Not sure what you mean about "topic of the day", but with regards to
announcements, that could indeed be a good idea. I suppose the minimum
would be to get this idea endorsed by the committee (so that they
remember to use it). Perhaps people should subscribe /either/ to the
plug at plug list or plug-announce at plug list -- announcements would go to
both lists so you'd subscribe to whichever one you were most comfortable
with??

> i just find that with the archive abilities of a forum i can use it
> more like a library of information that i can search a topic 

There used to be web fora (at the old PLUG website), but not used very
much (esp. compared to the mailing list). However, people seem to raise
concerns about "volume" (as you have done) at least once each year.
Somehow, people "get by". Maybe people use the "scorefile" capabilities
of their e-mail clients, or filter mail on the server (e.g. IMAP). There
are some new features in Mailman to facilitate categorisation of thread
topics, but I don't know how effectual those could be.