Re: mailing list

Thanks to all those who responded to my original post about forum v mail-list.

Thinking about how this mail-list works, I suspect an individual reply to each comment would quickly create a mess in all your inboxes. Trust this alternative combined format is acceptable and convenient.

Thanks to William H for your words of welcome, and pointers to useful info.

Yes, found those links, and some more too, including

http://wiki.koumbit.net/SqlLedger/FrequentlyAskedQuestions Yes, my mail clients can "do threading", but its not the same as having a single continuous screen full of all the detailed responses all neatly laid out without having to open them one by one.

Thanks to Luke. Yes, the latter. Unfortunately the SF archive searching technology leaves very much to be desired. Yes, there's plenty of us old-fogies about.

Thanks to Johan H. Your words of encouragement are also most welcome. I shall indeed persist and hopefully with time, can learn to enjoy the experience.

Joea. Perhaps we can agree to disagree. I believe the ability to edit forum posts is most useful and quite reasonable. Hardly worth comparing to audit trails of accounting records.

Cliff. Yes, I'd be grateful for an invitation to try gmail. Your generosity is much appreciated.

Jeff K. Good ideas.

Philip. Yes, I too vote for both.

Sorry for not mentioning other contributors. Not meaning to offend.

So, it all comes down to convenience, and that is truly a very personal thing. Mine comes from being mostly permanently on-line. Hadn't realised that many others find off-line e-mail browsing on trains and other places so useful. I do understand, now.

There's also a cultural perspective. I have this idea that messages on a forum are stored in someone else's space, yet messages in my Inbox have invaded my private and personal space. Maybe I'll be able to get over it, without drugs.

I still have a phobia about pressing the send button, and sending this little message off to a mailing list of unknown proportions. This message will end up in the inboxes of folk that I don't even know. Even worse, that I can't edit it later !

Thats enough. Now where's the "Close thread" button ? Oh I forgot, you can't do that on a mailing-list, only a web-based forum. :smile: (No emoticons either.)

Back to reading the SL manual.

Cheers to all.

David J

On Thu, 11 May 2006 00:30:40 -0500 (CDT), Luke wrote

> On Thu, 11
May 2006, David J wrote:

>

>

> Newbie here. Pls be gentle.

>

>

Okay. Welcome, and may I gently request that you use full words, not SMS

>

messaging abbreviation? Just a thought. (re "pls")

>

>

> And I've become less than enthusiastic about the way this mailing list

>

> works.

>

> While I'm happy to have a stream of emails filtered into an SQL-Ledger

>

> directory of my mail system (OpenWebMail),

>

> its quite tedious and difficult to follow the chronology of some

>

> messages. Simply, there's no threading.

>

>

By threading, do you mean "messages organized according to subject"?
Or

>

do you mean "messages organized by subject, from this and previous

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discussions with similar subjects, possibly before I subscribed to the

>

list"?

>

>

If the former: it is a failing of your mail software--this works fine for

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others, myself included, using non-webmail software (for me, it's pine

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under FreeBSD).

>

>

If you mean the latter: I recognize that this might be considered

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annoying; you must use the archives. Since subject lines for similar

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topics are rarely identical, however, the value of that would seem

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limited, and you would have to search the archives with or without

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threading.

>

>

> How can I quickly determine whether an old question has already been

>

> answered ?

>

>

Google and the archives. I can not speak to the bugginess of the SF

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archival system--I would suggest you file a complaint with their support

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staff if the problem persists.

>

>

> Has anybody considered setting up a typical web-based forum like so many

>

> other systems use ?

>

>

Just a personal observation, so take it for what it's worth: developers,

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and tech support forums related to a single product, project, or service,

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often take the form of mailing lists, while defuse support systems for

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multiple products, etc., often do well with web forum management systems.

>

>

> Most forums work so much better than this quaintly old-fashioned

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> mailing-list technology.

>

>

Quaintly old-fashioned, is it?:) Then I suppose I am happy to be a

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reputed old fogie.

>

>

Is it that the point and click generation like web forums where they have

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to go after the content; whereas the generation for whom email was the end

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all, be all, and reason for using the net in the first place, and who

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otherwise have full schedules of work, business, families, etc., prefer

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having the content conveniently delivered to them?

>

That certainly is true for me--I don't have time to go hunting down

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questions and answers on a web forum, especially when all I have to do is

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press five keys, and I am reading SL related messages in a nice clean

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folder of their own, which I can duck in and out of at will, without

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having to maintain several active Screens/windows (of which I already have

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quite enough running at any given time).

>

>

> Whats the downsides of a user-forum instead of mail-list ?

>

>

Convenience. I want it coming to me, I don't want to be going to it (and

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then logging in, juggling passwords, dealing with a clunky web interface,

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playing with text area sizes, etc.). That's the downside from my

>

prospective.

>

>

By the way, if mailing lists were quaint and old fashioned, YahooGroups

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would not still be in business and growing daily. Now, I'm no big fan of

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yahoogroups (but then I run my own list servers, so don't have to be:)),

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but they are just one of many.

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Of course, they have a bit of the best of both worlds, giving web access

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to their messages. However, most good mailing list software is catching

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on to the fact that some people actually do prefer a web interface, and it

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is useful for archiving. Unfortunately, I still haven't found Mailman to

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be particularly great at doing this. I'm a Sympa fan, although that's

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neither here nor there.

>

>

> IMHO a phpBB based (or similar) user forum would be a real benefit to the

>

> community of SQL-Ledger usres.

>

>

and a real pita to those of us who don't have the time or patience for yet

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another just slightly different interface.

>

>

> So here goes. I press the "Send" button knowing that I cannot
edit,

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> amend or correct this post after its gone.

>

>

Oh, the horror! Actually having to commit to saying one specific

>

thing!:) (tongue firmly planted in cheek)

>

A good point, of course, but it just goes to confirm, that one should take

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the time and care to get it right the first time! Or is the art of

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writing really and truly dead?:)

>

>

Luke