wscottfield@comcast.net wrote on 07/10/2006 10:51:27 AM:
> Just to offer a different viewpoint: for the occasional
Obvious not a 'different' viewpoint; shared by many. Right now, I'm
assuming not either/or, but one will win out eventually.
> Another advantage forums have over mailing lists is that
Mail lists can be set up to avoid that, though it's been a regular thing for
me to reply about something off list. Hidden addresses would tend to kibosh
that.
> Also, some forums have the ability to email thread content
Still usually a one-way conversation.
> Personally, I'm fine either way. And as infrequently as I
I speak more often, but I certainly don't suggest of more value. This list
cherishes it's lurkers, trust me. Just, Laserlight would hope they could at
least send in a few AAR's of new rules. (SEE, still pitching, Chris!)
Notice, I did switch this back to BERKELEY!
> From: Peter Thoenen <eol1@yahoo.com>
Only Forty? Damn, when did we let children in here... ;->=
Still two months away from senior discounts(and don't EVEN mention
retirement),
The_Beast
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lWell, I'll be
honest unless U have unlimited space, forum also run into the "well we are out
of space, so we are deleting all data back to and as someone
else mentioned earlier U have the ability to edit and remove/change your
posting after it been there. With the list, I don't think U can. And
to be honest if the Mods of a forum, get a on a power trip, they can
block/delete
anything they disagree with, and no one can see the otherside. Here years ago,
I was here for a "Remove JohnA" period and it passed, aMod who disliked John
Could ban him at will. I would prefer the list to remain, but I understand
that "forum are the new way. Just don't have to like it..
DOCAGREN
Just a Lurker here on the Digest, But maybe I have a good idea or 2..
:-)
To all those that went to the forums to check it out,
I've manually activated all the accounts, there was an error in the mail setup
for the forums which I hadn't caught yet (it's not public yet so I tend to do
all the adjustments in the admin panel until testing stage like this;)
The email problem has been corrected and all the accounts are now active.
Thanks for your time.
> Well, I'll be honest unless U have unlimited space, forum also run
That can happen. Usually that is with small "rented" space that's hosting the
forum. I don't know what Jon's service provider has available for him but the
server that the test forum is on (mine) has gigabytes of space dedicated to
things like this. If we double the usual list trafic, and add in the in the
test list's traffic (which the forum currently is also designed for) I figure
it'll be about 10 years before that would be an issue. Space really isn't that
much of an issue IF you think long term and plan accordingly.
> else mentioned earlier U have the ability to edit and remove/change
And
> to be
No always. It's an option that you can enable or disable. Most boards I know
disable it. You can also set a timer on it so no editing after a certain
period of time.
> honest if the Mods of a forum, get a on a power trip, they can
Correct that can happen. That's a staffing and management issue. To be honest
though a board can get away with very few moderators and if you choose right,
that shouldn't be an issue. If it becomes one the simple solution is to remove
the Mod.
Also Mods don't have to have complete access to the admin features. You can
limit Mod access in a variety of ways allowing them to do only specific
things. I've personally never had a Mod issue on any of my forums.
Jaime wrote on 07/10/2006 12:52:17 PM:
***snippage***
> > Here years ago, I was here for a "Remove JohnA" period
Can Mods be limited to a particular topic? I assume they can be restricted to
a particular section, say Game Discussion, or subsection, say, FMA Skirmish,
but, could I be given moderation of the topic I just started? Not asking to be
the mod, just curious about the ganularity of control.
I just came up against another problem I have with forums: J/JS. ;->=
By the way, I was offering John bases of ships I've not built up since I knew
he'd get them into use long before I might. However, I may be interested in a
few extra myself. We'll talk....
The_Beast
> Can Mods be limited to a particular topic? I assume they can be
You can limit Mods to forums sections. Say the StargruntII forum only.
> I just came up against another problem I have with forums: J/JS. ;->=
J/JS?
> By the way, I was offering John bases of ships I've not built up since
Okay
Jaime wrote on 07/10/2006 01:59:59 PM:
> > I just came up against another problem I have with
Java/Javascript.
As Tony can tell you, considering I'm the reason his site has the choice of
Frames/No Frames, I'm a neo-Luddite.
Keeping J/JS turned off blocks a lot of kewl content, occasionally
entire
sites; also a lot of pop-ups before blockers became available, and a lot
of cracker c**p, of the less gifted variety. Sad commentary when 'hacking' is
done by simplest means available. *sigh*
As much of the 'kewl content' is on sites trying to sell me something, both
our losses. ;->=
The_Beast
> From: Peter Thoenen <eol1@yahoo.com>
As someone who is closing in on 50 I am glad to see I am still seen as
the Younger Generation. :-)
I would be much more active on a forum then this list. I would remain a
lurker on the list. Course that mioght be what some of you want. :-)
dafrca
> On 7/10/06, wscottfield@comcast.net <wscottfield@comcast.net> wrote:
Personally, I prefer e-mail. I am on a bunch of forums, including
Yahoo Groups. I visit them maybe once every month or two. The main exception
is the RPG.Net group, but I only bother looking through first page of
messages.
The "giving e-mail address" thing is no big deal, since there is a
plethora of free e-mail sites. If you get a Gmail account you have 2
GB of storage with an excellent search engine. I doubt the full 7 or 8 years
of list archives touches 10% of that.
I use my Gmail account for all my e-mail. I have some mailing lists
forwarding into folders automatically. You can do this with any
competent e-mail programs, and MS Outlook. I don't understand the
"wade through hundreds of messages" comments, as it is so easy to have
inbound e-mails from this list shunted to a folder.
Gmail supports POP, giving me full offline editing with an online personal
archive.
A forum would allow HTML editing and posting of pictures, something that is
verboten on the list (though I notice quite a few people
squeezing in HTML e-mail).
As others have said, if the list was shifted to a forum I would be less
active. I suspect, though, that this will be an invevitable shift. Forums are
the de facto standard. Most folks don't have a clue how to sign up to a
traditional mailing list.
Having explored the BB route before for Jon and others, its like a lot of
things each has their own uses and users and although it would be nice to have
both up and running and keep everyone happy, in my experience that will never
happen.
One or the other will die out, what you have to bear in mind is that having
both will only please half the people half the time, but its
biggest impact will be to _double_ Jons workload in having to answer
questions in two locations many of which will be duplicates between both
places. This fact alone would be enough for me to say pick one and stick too
it and as the list is well known and used that would be my choice, it would be
anyway as I favour lists but that's beside the point. Having more than one
medium for voicing oppinions tends to dilute the quality of the content and
reduce the number of users in both places which inevitably leads to
disillusioned users and a catch 22 situation.
We are working on improving the officail GZG site and have been for some time
now, there are no plans to include a BB though, but it will be a content
managed site containing supplemental material for GZG related goods as well as
all the usual announcments etc that go with these things, there are no plans
as yet to make people register and allow then editorial style access, the site
is capable of that, its just turned off.
The BB site does look very nice though and also very official!! Not sure how
Jon feels about that part of it and yes I have cc'ed him on this.
Personally I am a member of too many forums as it is, so I like following the
gzg stuff via a mailing list. However:
- I filter out all gzg mail and put it into a separate folder
- I use mutt, so things are sorted by thread
this way my main mailbox doesn't get cluttered.
A forum can give added value though like faqs, galleries and stuff. A lot of
this is covered by the yahoo group and other websites, but to be honest, I
don't visit there much.
> The BB site does look very nice though and also very official!! Not
Well it was supposed to since he's the one that requested it from me. I even
email you several times about it to get some data on the GZG server and the
new site design which you didn't respond to.
Maybe I didn't make this clear enough initially, but months ago I brought the
topic up on the list because I was wondering why we were still using an email
list (since I personally dislike them for the bulk content the GZG produces.
In my opinion forums work much much better when you have multiple threads
going). Jon and I conversed about it for a bit and I put together the forum
we're discussing now for him.
I want the groups feedback on the layout and usibility on it because if it
went live you people would be the ones using it. I have already had a bunch of
other beta testers go through for that as well.
> > The BB site does look very nice though and also very
Well now that's cos I never got any (or so I thought), however my spam filter
on my ISP server did get 1 which I have now retrieved and yes it does look
like you emailed me back in January. My apologies for not replying. Shall we
try again and see if we can make everyone happy. If so contact me off list.
> Well now that's cos I never got any (or so I thought), however my spam
If
> so contact me off list.
Well that would explain why you never replied ;-)
Yep, I've told the filters all about you now though;)
Paul Owen GT Network Solutions Ltd M:07980 823765 T:01476 514687
> -----Original Message-----
Something else we may want to consider. I think the mailing list is fine at
its current volume of traffic. But what if the number of posts and posters
were to increase by an order of magnitude? (Even some small
gaming forums I've seen can get 100+ posts on a slow day.) Would the
mailing list still be manageable? This list generally only has 2 or 3
different threads going at one time - what if there were 20-30 different
threads going on? Would you find it harder to follow the discussions? I've
never been on a list with that much traffic, so I don't know.
I'm not saying that this is likely to happen whether we stay on a list or move
to a forum. I think we would all agree that having that much "new blood"
involved in the game would be a great thing for GZG, and therefore for the
rest of us. So if moving to a forum becomes a way to get more people involved
in our little virtual community (I don't know it would be, I'm saying *if*),
and conversely a forum becomes the only way to effectively manage that many
people... is switching to a forum a price we're willing to pay?
I know that's a lot of assumptions, and I can't swear to the validity of any
of them; I'm just thinking out loud. As I've said, I don't have a problem with
either the list or the forum idea. (Personally, I've never had any problems
with yahoo groups either, but that's just me.)
Scott
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 07:18:05PM +0000, wscottfield@comcast.net wrote:
If people use threading email clients, it's no problem at all. Some of the
playtest lists I've been on have had 800 or more posts a day, and I've had no
trouble keeping up with the threads that interested me.
But some people don't like to use threading email clients, some people don't
know they exist, and some people can't because they're stuck with whatever
they're issued with at work.
R
> Something else we may want to consider. I think the mailing list is
Non issue. I am on a couple mailing lists that get 300 or 400 posts a day. No
big deal. Email client sorts, threads, subthreads, filters,and handles all by
individual subject, concept, and date, and sorted much easier than any forum I
have ever seen.
I also have no problem if we go forum as long as somebody makes a smtp
/ nntp sort of interface for it. Personally though I don't think its
worth the hassle and would just keep it like it is. Then again, I just don't
do forums period. Once a site goes mandatory forum, podcast, rss, wiki, or
blog they lose my participation and money (if a business).
> Something else we may want to consider. I think the mailing list is
It's not manageable at all. I've been through it on both sides, on a forum
with 100s of posts a day and a list with over a 100. The list completely bogs
down for anyone not using a email client that sorts by topic. In fact it's
almost completely unsortable.
As far as I'm aware, the bulk of users these days use a web based email
clients that don't group. Even today, with the flood of discussion we're
having it's a pain to get through my inbox after I leave the office for any
period.
> I'm not saying that this is likely to happen whether we stay on a list
Well to touch on bringing in more people: 1) The bulk of the gamers I know
prefer forums over lists 2) The bulk of the gamers I know use webmail 3) The
younger crowd don't like using something if it doesn't look pretty enough 4)
Not all forums are created equal, and users these days know that, so if the
forum isn't well designed it won't be used.
> don't do forums period. Once a site goes mandatory forum, podcast,
A wiki for GZG stuff would be very handy. Incorporating the Unoficcial
Encyclopedia into it and the likes. I find wiki very handy tools if the group
has done a good job on the articles.
> On Tuesday 11 July 2006 22:14, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
An 'official' wiki which covered new rules and designs (e.g. the various
fleets such as IJN etc) and notes on the official background would be useful.
Finding the new ship designs, rules for the new weapon systems, or even the
alternative point systems can be a pain.