Dmitry Kamenetsky wrote:
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.
Sadly, you chose a topic that is close to the hearts of many. I like the style of this follow up post much more than the original in that you try to give your reasons for wanting a forum. By giving a post that shows time and effort to reflect on an issue and articulate an argument, you'll tend to get similar posts in response. If your suggestion really is to go somewhere, someone really needs to provide a balanced perspective on the change from e-mail/newsgroup to forum. It's already come up that a lot of the features you're looking for are available in various e-mail/newsgroup clients. It's very important to compare/contrast what can be done through a reader of someone's choice verses a very specific web-based forum where everyone has no choice. As an example, my client supports threads with watch/ignore options, custom filters to posts or sort into folders, some quick search options (such as sender, topic, keywords), saved searches (allowing easy repeat later), and other more typical features such as sorting and advanced filters. Your list shows only two things that are novel relative to my reader. They are the +/- and the editing of a post after you've posted it. I personally find editing of a post after others have responded to it to be a bit dangerous of a feature. I like the +/- thing. Sadly, those two things are not enough for me to change how I read through the computer go mailing list. If it was the only mailing list that I subscribe to, that might be a different story. A common (and powerful) interface for all my mailing lists is more valuable to me than a bunch of slightly more powerful web pages that I have to visit in sequence.
It's been mentioned to have a combination forum/mailing list/newsgroup, and without any very compelling arguments one way or the other, I think that solution really is best. Obviously, even a change to the host of the mailing list (for a better web interface) will receive resistance, but would at least get less. I'm sure others will simply say to petition gmane to update their interface for what you want.
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/
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