[mythtv-users] Need for a real forum?

[Oxygen]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim Litwiller" <tim at litwiller.net>
To: "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 3:56 PM
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Need for a real forum?


> Graham Siener wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> > I've been a myth user for about 4 months now, and I'm very satisfied
> > and impressed with MythTV.  Lately I've been trying to delve deeper by
> > using MythMusic and MythGame, etc.  I know that a mailing list was the
> > decided form of communication, but would anyone else out there prefer
> > a real online forum?
>
> I've watch many a project dry up and die when they moved to forums
> instead of mailing lists.  Some few people like them better but unless
> everything that is posted in the forums is also in a subscribed list
> busy people don't have time to go find the information.
>
> With a descent email program like mozilla, a few filters, and threaded
> views turned on there is no comparison.
>

E-Mail to _me_, in a "mailing list way of using it" has this problems:

Loss of messages, or messages that _some_ people never gets to notice due
to:

Mailboxes get full, email gets rejected due to 1000 things that might go
wrong, mismatch email that might get eaten by filters or marked as spam,
some mail servers are not as fast so information is not "instant".

If someone cant connect for a few days to check email it might fill the
mailbox blocking other email also, in my case this would be hard because i
have a separate email just the lists i read with huge quoata, but not
everyone can do this.

Its a mess, with threaded messages and filters, you can make it usable, yet
people talk about a forum requiring users to learn a new UI, but most users
don't use a threaded newsreader or special filters either.

Its just _very_ inefficient due to:

Every reply should be posted at the end of the first or last message without
removing it so if someone never got the first original message or the last
message posted it can continue to understand the conversation (even if
people don't do it like this, it should be done like this).

Some people also might respond to the same question with the same answer due
to email not being instant.

Its a waste of bandwidth and overall internet resources (witch is pretty
irresponsible IMHO) due to the fact that everyone gets everything, not just
the topic or subject but the whole message, and lots of those emails get
deleted because the topic is a-.) Not of the user interest. b-) Not of the
user knowledge. And its also a waste of bandwidth due to the first 2 things
i noted why its inefficient.


But this is my $0.002 in te conversation, and i will keep reading the
mailing list if there isnt a better, more organized way of reading about
MythTV info.


Thanks,

Manny.