On 30 October 2010 12:22, Lauri Alanko <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 01:55:12PM -0700, Don Stewart wrote: >> The number of subscribers to the Haskell Reddit, for example, is double >> the -cafe@, and there are comparable numbers of questions being asked on >> the Stack Overflow [haskell] tag, as here -- so anyone who only reads >> -cafe@ is already missing a lot of stuff. >> >> A lot of the community has already voted on the efficacy of mailing >> lists for large communities, by moving their discussion elsewhere. > > Do you mean that people have actually unsubscribed from the list in > favor of only following web-based media? New people who only join the > web forums do not "vote" since they may not even know about the > mailing list. > > I know that this is a hopeless battle, but since I feel very strongly > about this, I'll indulge in defending the mailing list even though > this is rather off-topic. > > The reasons why I prefer mailing lists (and newsgroups, rest in piece) > over web-based discussion forums: > > * Usability: mail and news clients provide a consistent interface to > all the discussions, and the customizability and diversity of > clients ensures that everyone can access the discussions the way > they like it. In contrast, web forums come with their built-in > interfaces, and if you don't like them, you are SOL. > > * Scalability: related to the above, since mail and news provide a > consistent interface to all the discussions, adding new lists and > groups to be followed requires minimal effort since they just show > up as new items whose updates get tracked automatically. In the > worst case, adding a new web forum to be followed requires visiting > the site frequently to check whether new messages have arrived. RSS > and similar syndication technologies help, thankfully, but support > for them is inconsistent, and often incomplete (they might not > notify about new comments, only new topics). I subscribe to tens of > mailing lists without problems. I wouldn't want to try to follow > tens of web forums regularly. > > * Archivability: with mail and news, it is trivial for me to get local > copies of the discussions (and the messages I myself have written) > which I can peruse and search to my heart's content later without > being dependent on the continued functioning of some external > service. Although it is possible to save web pages locally, this > usually very inconvenient, especially if one wants the local copies > to be kept up to date with ongoing discussions. > > * Offline support: related to the above, with mail and news fetching > and sending messages are separate from reading and writing > them. Hence one can read and write messages even when one is for > some reason not online. Web forums practically require an online > connection when one wants to read the discussions. > > * Neutrality: newsgroups are completely distributed and not controlled > by any single entity. Mailing lists are a centralized service, but a > purely technical one. The haskell.org mailing lists (like the rest > of haskell.org) are directly maintained by the community. In > contrast, external web forums like reddit and stackoverflow are > owned by companies, and visits to the sites bring ad revenue to the > companies. Moreover, the contents of these sites are subject to > deletion (or perhaps even editing) by the whims of their owners. > > In short, the old technologies of mail and news are technically vastly > superior to web forums, which have required additional technologies > (e.g. RSS) to attempt to overcome the obstacles that mail and news > solve directly. > > It is true that web forums are nowadays very popular and have some > nice features that the older technologies don't. The main reason for > this, I suspect, is money: mail and news are from the older, more > innocent age when internet technology was driven by the desire to > communicate efficiently instead of making money. They are by their > nature so neutral that they provide no financial incentive to develop > them or support them. The web, on the other hand, provides many > opportunites to profit by offering services, so it is no wonder that > web technologies have flourished in the commercialized internet. > > Perhaps this is inevitable, and it is certainly ok for the haskell.org > front page to provide links to reddit and stackoverflow just to inform > visitors that these sites might be of interest. > > But by saying "I encourage people to use the online forums: Haskell > Reddit and Stack Overflow" you are effectively saying: "please let > Condé Nast Digital and Stack Overflow Internet Services, Inc > capitalize on your interest in and knowledge of Haskell". I most > strongly object to this becoming the standard policy of the Haskell > community.
+1; that's pretty much my opinion/arguments as well. -- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic [email protected] IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [email protected] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
