A forum on/attached to the GZG site would be a powerful tool for the new
customer, and I certainly can understand Jon's interest in it. Probably
inevitable.
I'll be sticking, in the main, with the mail list, but I think it's likely all
the excitement will move to the forum, and the list will eventually die. My
participation has been mainly as gadfly, so relatively little loss, but I
doubt that I'll be taking sufficient effort to frequent the forum nearly as
much as I do here.
Has any thought been given to moderation of discussions? Repetition on the
mail list is too common, but less noticable than on forums where fourteen
topics can be all having the same discussion, and offensive content tends to
stay forever.
Please remember I was involved with an attempt at a forum+ for GZG;
after my failures,I think there needs to be a strong and committed, guiding
force. Jon or Paul may be that force, but I'm not sure they want to be that
hands on.,
The_Beast
> --- Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> wrote:
> A forum on/attached to the GZG site would be a powerful tool for the
Ja I know I will never look at it. I can see how it would be required from a
marketting stand point (lets all admit it, its a generational thing. Upcoming
markets (ala children) want forums, IM, mod'ing, and threads. Email and
mailing lists are for us old fogies;)
I am fine with a forum though as long as Jon (or somebody) still makes
official annoucements (even if limited discussion) on the mailing list. I do
think we will miss a lot though going to the forums as I believe lots of folk
are like me and dislike them immensely.. guessing many of the older players.
Such is marketting though and GZG needs to do so I am assuming.
On a purely operational note, forums are a pain to archive... you ever tried
to find a forum post stored in a database from 10 years ago. You can find
mailing lists and usenet posts from decades ago... forums just don't get
archived, references, or last.. its one of the bigger problems with them I
find (that and "edit" buttons allow people to retract something they said
without anybody knowing or even be edit'ing by a moderator.. something you
rarely see on mailing lists.
> Ja I know I will never look at [a forum].
I tend to go thru a forum only every few months or when I have a specific
question. I wouldn't be nearly as involved as with a mailing list.
Well, let me be the voice of dissent and explain that I like forums better
than mailing lists.
There's nothing wrong with the mailing list, mind you, and I will hardly
abandon them if/when the forum takes off. But the thing is, I get maybe
a
hundred personal e-mails a day, and a raft-load of work e-mails a
day. Picking through those to read the GZG ones ends up beign a seperate
chore, and if it's a busy day they get shuttled to the side as I catch up on
other things, and clog up the mailbox until I find the time. The digest format
helps, but then I'm always slightly behind the curve.
Whereas with my gaming forums, when I have a few spare minutes during the work
day, I can just hop over there, catch up, make vaguely comedic replies, and
head back to reread when I get around to it. It's more compartmentalized.
-P.
> abandon them if/when the forum takes off. But the thing is, I get
{Asshole sarcasm not meant here... tone hard to imply as everybody knows}
You do know they make filters right? e.g. make a Full Thrust directory and
just filter "on receive gzg* move to Full Thrust"
> P. wrote:
> Well, let me be the voice of dissent and explain that I like forums
I also get over a hundred emails per day. Downloading them to my hard drive
takes a few minutes per day, after which I can read them at my leisure. Better
still, I can download the emails to a laptop and read them on my way to or
from work.
With a web forum, I pretty much have to be on-line to read anything.
Sure, I can open each forum post and copy'n'paste it into a text file, but
that's
far more work than simply downloading the emails :-(
> Whereas with my gaming forums, when I have a few spare minutes during
You're lucky to have an employer who allows surfing non-work-related
forums, then <shrug>
***
> Jaime Tiempo wrote:
> Yearts ago I was quite the active member on this list, and at one point
Most of the web forums I visit reasonably regularly are pruned every
12-18
months (ie., any thread that hasn't had any new posts within the past
12-18
months is deleted). The archives of this mailing list stretch back at least
7-8 years, and is at least as searchable as those web forums are...
Regards,