discuss: TLDP forums?
Subject:
Re: [discuss] TLDP forums?
From:
Rick Moen ####@####.####
Date:
4 Nov 2008 19:20:13 +0000
Message-Id: <20081104191912.GO5561@linuxmafia.com>
Quoting John Eikenberry ####@####.####
> I also prefer mailing lists but know of people that prefer forums.
OK, gang, obligatory list of arguments that need to be aired whenever
and wherever this sort of thing is proposed -- posted in hopes of
shortening the cycle on this ritualised discussion.
Web forums characteristically have really bad (nonexistent) threading,
horribly inflexible reply modes, no possibility of scoring/killfile
features, and poor prominence in Google and similar indexes. The
more-thoughtful contributors tend over time to shy away from
contributing at all, because they aren't (easily) able to retain
usable local copies of their own (and others' related) posts, such
that, when inevitably the Web forum collapses and disappears, their
work gets lost. By the time a contributor has seen a few well-crafted
posts vanish off the Internet in that fashion, it's very common for the
contributor to say "Screw this", and (mostly) abandon Web forums for
more-robust, better technology such as mailing lists and newsgroups.
So, you end up with a situation where the Web forums are dominated by
people who have no idea what they're talking about, propagating
misinformation to each other (see, e.g., ubuntuforums.org and the long
tradition there of really bad advice about how to best install
non-packaged software).
The "Web forum" packages of my experience tend to be extremely slowly
performing for commodity hardware, prone to severe congestion when they
get significant levels of traffic, and prone to back-end database
problems requiring intensive administration. (Think you have an
exception? Build it and show us.)
Are you offering to be the ongoing sysadmin to build, run, maintain, and
debug such a system, in any event? Is anyone here making that offer?
Do we all seriously have nothing better to do with limited volunteer
time and resources?
(Is this mailing list determined to rehash _every single_ dumb argument
that has plagued the Internet?)
