D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

Re: [LUG] forum?

 

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 04:28:00PM +0000, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jan 2009, John Clarke wrote:
> 
> > is there a website forum for this list ?
> > Just wondered if there is, where is it?
> > if there isn't - is there a reason why not ?
> > seems like the list would lend itself to that nicely...
> 
> Forums are the work of the devil for those who can't type nor use a decent 
> email program.
> 
> Sorry to be blunt, but I hate forums and only use them when I'm absolutely 
> forced into it.
> 
> I have the means to sort, search, file and otherwise handle email using my 
> preferred platforms - forums are slow, clunky, bloaty and otherwise 
> unwieldy compared to my super fast, lightweight and slick email system.
> 
> I used to run many mailing lists - and fortunately, a few still remain. I 
> watched them be taken over by forums and the overall quality of postings 
> dropped dramatically. Rather than one of 2 specialist mailing lists (Scuba 
> related - another passion of mine), now there are dozes of forums and it's 
> impossible to track all of them. One, I even host a dedicated server for 
> and I'm utterly gob-smacked at the bandwidth it uses - especially on the 
> incoming side - punters are sitting there hitting reload, reload, reload, 
> reload, Ooh, a posting, best post a 2-line reply... reload, reload, 
> reload, reload, .. etc. Lifes too short.
> 
> Email comes to me, I can deal with it when I need to, I have a decent 
> editor, not some bloated javascript POS, etc. blah, blah.

Hm, are you reading my mind? This is exactly my argument in favour of
mailing lists (or one of them, anyway) -- I don't have to remember to
check back every so often to see if there's an answer, it just ends up
in my mail directory. I'm on dozens of mailing lists -- a couple of
LUGs, quite a few Debian ones, and various others. I'd hate to have to
check dozens of websites on a daily (or even weekly) basis just to keep
up with them.

I hate forums with a passion. They do nothing that mailing lists or
Usenet don't do, and they do it in a way that locks you into a single
interface. If you must do this sort of thing, a web interface to a
newsgroup or mailing list would be the best solution. They also seem to
be a common source of security problems - everybody writes their own
forum, reinventing the wheel and full of the same SQL injection and XSS
problems as all the others.

-- 
Benjamin M. A'Lee || mail: bma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
web: http://subvert.org.uk/~bma/ || gpg: 0xBB6D2FA0

-- 
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html