Trimming List Posts? - A Case Study

[jarednichols]

My workplace, about a year and a half ago, wanted to move one of the mailing lists to a forum. We did it and based it upon Simple Machines Forum. The traffic that was on the mailing list never translated to the traffic on the forum and it's been a withering shell for about a year.

To put a further nail in the coffin of our forum, a mailing list that we didn't control was stood up instead.

I'm far less likely to check a forum than my email. Email lists are also a lot easier to use on mobile devices.

j

[ernstcs]

Now that’s probably the most compelling argument thus far IMO.

Craig E

[donmontalvo]

Jared,
"Nichols, Jared - 1160 - MITLL" <jared.nichols at ll.mit.edu> wrote:

I kind of agree, but it just seems like this list has turned into a noisy chat room. It's becoming increasingly difficult to get to useful information. Careful quoting and some moderation would help greatly.

Don

[taugust04]

Are there any settings that allow the rejection of a post that has On Dec 18, 2009, at 10:03 AM, Don Montalvo wrote:
"digest" in the subject. It seems that the folks that forget to remove the extra text from the digest, often also forget to change the subject of the e-mail message to reference the thread they are responding too.

Personally, I hate digests - they kind of cancel out the point of having a mailing list in the first place, and they cause some of the problems we've been discussing on this thread.

I would vote against having a forum, compared to a mailing list. I believe all that is needed are some polite reminders of netiquette to those who do post and reply. I'm sure some users of this list were not exposed to the early days of the Internet, where the limitation was bandwidth, and the amount of columns and rows of text you could see on your screen. Forums are good for certain things, but, the problem is keeping track of them. Every day I open my e-mail client and I have the ability to look at any of the 10 mailing lists I'm a member of, sorted/filtered into their own folders. I would not put as much effort into going to a forum site to keep up with discussions.

In addition, I routinely use Spotlight to search my mailing lists (which I view in Mail.app) for answers to questions I may have, before I post them. I can do the same on my iPod Touch, and using Gmail, when I'm away from my mail client. A forum's search capabilities are not as robust.

Just my two cents.

-- Ted August
Salve Regina University

[donmontalvo]

I agree, with some *gentle* moderation, these issues should never get out of control. 12 years ago, a bunch of us were on the Claris Emailer list and...
On Dec 18, 2009, at 4:09 PM, Ted August wrote:

http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/05/a_day_in_the_life_of_emailerta.html

Don

[tlarkin]

Forums allow for subscriptions and email notices. There can be a digest sent too, with updates of the hot topics of the week. I hate mailing lists because of forwards, and multiple replies that make it convoluted. Plus I hate dealing with attachments and spam filters and firewalls.

Email is an older archaic technology almost these days, and was built off of some really old concepts. In the end though I don't really care all that much, but some of you that are stating that you don't like forums because it is not in your email is kind of a moot complaint. All the forums I am on give me all sorts of subscription options via email. I turn most of them off as I go check out those forums every other day or so.

Just my 2 cents.

Tom

[talkingmoose]

Having participated in forums, newsgroups and mailing lists for years, I
personally have no preference.

The heart of these various discussion lists are the communities that inhabit
them. What drives folks to seek out a community or what drives folks away
from a community has never been the discussion mechanism. :-)

We're only debating this whole forums vs. mailing list subject (again)
because someone made a netiquette faux pas and someone else complained.
Mistakes can happen with any tool -- forums, newsgroups and mailing lists.

The community is correcting itself. This tells me the current tool is
working just fine.

--

bill

William M. Smith, Technical Analyst
MCS IT
Merrill Communications, LLC
(651) 632-1492