[Talk-GB] OSM Analysis New Data and bot

[Tom Hughes]

On 10/06/11 10:17, Graham Stewart wrote:

> That raises the question of why on earth we're still using cliquey
> semi-private email lists when we could be using nice open public forums
> with categories, threaded discussions, formatting and voting - but that
> is a discussion for another day. ;)

How is a mailing list with multiple public archives any more or less 
cliquey than a web forum?

By the way lists have categories - they are called lists.

They also have threaded discussions, at least unless your mail client 
was written in about 1985 or something.

If you really want you can send HTML mail for formatting - we don't 
actual stop such things. Though of course people who don't need to see 
all the colour and blinking can read as plain text instead.

Far and away the biggest advantage of mailing lists is that they deliver 
messages right to my desktop where I can skip through dozens of messages 
in a matter of seconds.

By comparison the UI of web forums is just horrendous and time sapping 
to an extraordinary degree. First you have to remember to visit the 
forum to see if there are new messages, then you have to click through 
each message, twiddling your thumbs while you wait for each page to load 
as you move from message to message.

I know which model I prefer thanks.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://compton.nu/