Re: Message Board

[Ian Petersen <iep@mail.dk>]

Matthew,

> I personally find message boards so much more conveinent than mailing 
> lists.

I find quite the reverse is true. Message boards are OK for stuff like 
product support where you don't need to follow a conversation - just ask 
a question, get an answer and get out. But they rarely have decent 
threading, making it impossible to know who is saying what to whom. And, 
since most web-boards use some sort of time-based cookie arrangement for 
marking posts read or unread, you never can be sure whether you haven't 
missed an important message or not. Even worse is the fact that you have 
to manually go out and fetch each and every message yourself - perhaps 
from half a dozen or more different boards, each with their own 
interface and way of working. This is extremely ineffective. It takes me 
the same time to skim through a couple of dozen web-board messages as it 
does to skim a couple of hundred emails ...

With mailing lists all my messages come to me automatically without 
having to lift a finger. My mail app sorts them into nicely threaded 
folders for me to read at my leisure - presented in a consistent and 
controllable interface no matter where the messages come from. And I'm 
certain I have all the messages a thread for further reference. In fact 
I have in my current messagebase every email and news message I've sent 
or received since 1996! It's a goldmine of information on a variety of 
subjects that would be impossible to assimilate in any other way. 

-- 

  Ian Petersen