Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: Forums... again

On 04/29/2011 11:33 AM, e-letter wrote:
> Not sure that a web forum suddenly makes the use of LO more appealing
> to "non-geeks"
>
> What's wrong with reading mailing list messages in digest mode and
> going to the searchable archive as and when appropriate.
>
> Has the been a poll on mailing list against forum?
>
> Regardless of the result, "non-geeks" should be encouraged to
> understand the benefits of a mailing list, similarly to explaining LO
> compared to m$o...
I don't know of any scientific studies on the matter, unfortunately. 
Speaking from anecdotal evidence, though, mailing lists tend to be 
attached to open source and other techie projects, or to niche groups 
that are too small to justify setting up a web forum. Otherwise web 
forums dominate. Larger open source projects tend to have both forums 
(for the general userbase) and mailing lists (for the more technically 
oriented crowd of users and for those working directly on the project), 
bearing out my (admittedly unscientific) observation.

I think this is because mailing lists have a higher barrier to entry. 
You need to subscribe to them to experience them the way they ought to 
be experienced. The archives are very bare bones and don't thread the 
conversations (which is also why I don't like digest mode; I want 
messages grouped according to subject, not the day they were sent, and I 
prefer it done three-dimensionally like Thunderbird's threading does). 
Okay, the Mail-archive.com ones do do threading, but they still only 
display only one message at a time (unlike a web forum) and you have to 
use the mouse to go forward and back, unlike in Thunderbird where you 
can navigate with the keyboard very adroitly.

I much prefer my mailing list setup to any forum, but that's part of the 
problem: it's my setup. A user's experience with a mailing list depends 
heavily on what that user brings to the table. With a web forum, it'll 
be the same for everyone who isn't using an ancient browser. Making the 
general office software-using populace learn to love mailing lists in 
order to discuss and get help with LibreOffice problems seems to be a 
totally unnecessary increase in LibreOffice's barrier to entry.

--
Isaac Hummel
isaac@daedaleus.com
http://daedaleus.isaachummel.com


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