I have been reading this list for nearly a year now and it is very discouraging to receive so much criticism for my first post.
The yahoo groups was merely an example to show how easy it is to get a forum started. I also agree that yahoo appends too much spam to its forums and I am sure there are many much much better free forums out there. The forums that I really like are the TopCoder forums (http://forums.topcoder.com/). I like them for these reasons: * One can post in various sections. The sections we can have here could be: Monte Carlo Go, Search in Go, Learning in Go, CGOS, KGS, Human Go. * Threads are easy to find and each thread has a post count. The post count is a good indication of how interesting that thread is. For example if there are many threads that I haven't had time to read, then I will first read the ones with the most post count. * Different viewing options: flat (newest first), threaded or tree. These can be useful for various purposes. * Each post has a '+' and '-' associated with it. This means that if you agree with the post then you simply press the '+' button and the plus count goes up, similarly if you disagree you press the '-' button. This serves two purposes: you don't have to post extra posts just to show your agreement/disagreement, which saves space and your time; also this is a great way to make votes - those in favour press '+', those against press '-'. * Each post is associated with a date and time. Also it is easy to ressurect threads that are years old. * If you had a typo or a mistake in your post, you can easily edit it. This is extremely useful. * It is not necessary, but it is always nice to see who you are talking to. * There is a very powerful message searching engine, which incorporates: section type, date range and member name. * You can watch threads that are of interest to you. I hope I have given some good reasons for having a forum. Since so many people here are against losing the list, why not the following: we keep the list, but give members the option of using a forum? This way we can all be happy :) _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
