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<span style="font-size:small;"><em>> <strong>Jerry Clough</strong> said:</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size:small;"><em>> Do you mean like this one: <a class="me59599moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=5">http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=5</a>.</em></span></div>
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I was thinking more like the layout in nabble:</div>
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http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OpenStreetMap-f660402.html</div>
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which I discovered shortly after making that comment and goes quite a way towards a usable solution for me.</div>
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(Though I notice it doesn't seem to have all the mailing lists on it).</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><em>> It's just not very popular.</em></span></div>
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I'm not surprised. It's pretty horrible.</div>
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Not sure why we need a forum, dozens of mailing lists (+ multiple archives), wiki discussions, hundreds of blogs and a stackexchange site.</div>
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Multiple channels of communication is good, but too much choice can be a bad thing. Noobs don't know where to go. Decisions made in one place are never communicated to the others.</div>
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I'm of the opinion that if you want to build a strong community then it helps to gather everyone in the same place.</div>
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<span style="font-size:small;"><em><strong>Tom Hughes</strong> said (on the other thread):</em></span></div>
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<span style="font-size:small;"><em>> How is a mailing list with multiple public archives any more or less<br />
> cliquey than a web forum?</em></span></div>
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Well for a start you have to publicly expose your email address to post here, which may put some folk off (I know I was hesitant).</div>
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And secondly there are no links to OSM profiles so you don't really know who you are talking to and what their agenda might be.</div>
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Thirdly it isn't scalable. This list only really works because hardly anyone posts on it. I'm a member of forums where there are often over a thousand posts in a day - that would be a bit of a pain by email.</div>
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Fourthly it just <em>feels</em> unnatural to me. My email is generally for private discussions. Public discussions belong on a public discussion forum.</div>
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<span style="font-size:small;"><em>> They also have threaded discussions, at least unless your mail client<br />
> was written in about 1985 or something.</em></span></div>
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Actually my webmail doesn't do threads ( http://fastmail.fm ) - my phone does, but it's a pain to try and quote lots of text on the phone.</div>
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A proper forum would support quoting multiple users in one reply (i.e. nicely formatted in quote boxes with links back to their original messages) which doesn't really fit with email threading.</div>
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Likewise other useful features such as polls, sticky threads, consistent formatting, image posting, moderators, spellcheckers, swear filters.</div>
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<span style="font-size:small;"><em>> Far and away the biggest advantage of mailing lists is that they deliver<br />
> messages right to my desktop where I can skip through dozens of messages<br />
> in a matter of seconds.</em></span></div>
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Most forums provide email notifications if that's what you really prefer.</div>
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Or it could provide an RSS feed - either for the entire forum or just for threads you are watching.</div>
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<span style="font-size:small;"><em>> By comparison the UI of web forums is just horrendous and time sapping<br />
> to an extraordinary degree. </em></span></div>
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Sorry Tom, but you've clearly used some awful forums.</div>
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A good organised forum should be faster and easier than trawling through email.</div>
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Anyway, let's not get carried away. My original comment was just a throw away aside.</div>
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I'm not about to start a campaign to ditch the lists and bring in forums.</div>
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GrahamS</div>
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