[Leaplist] I still think we need a forum

[John Simpson]

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On 2009-01-05, at 0941, tom foster wrote:
>
> ...So somebody set one up, dude.
>
> It could pick up the mailing list's slack when the list breaks.

and then you get a bunch of people who want to use the forum INSTEAD  
of the mailing list, and the group splits into three parts- the "list  
only" people, the "forum only" people, and those people who have the  
time and inclination to participate in both.

personally, i don't *like* forums, especially for a situation like  
this where a mailing list is a better solution. there are a few  
reasons for this:

one, i already check my email a few times a day anyway, so i already  
see the LEAP traffic as part a of my normal daily routine. having to  
check a forum is an additional act, a use of time which is devoted to  
LEAP only (instead of being shared with other email), which to me  
feels like a less "efficient" use of my time... that, and i honestly  
just don't feel like doing.

two, forums tend to encourage a different kind of behaviour from their  
users, namely posting a lot of "me too" or little smiley messages in  
an attempt to get their "post count" or "rank" up, as if the forum  
were some kind of popularity contest. to me it seems childish- i never  
understood why the people who write forum software decided to keep  
track of "post count" to begin with, let alone insert it into every  
single post people read. and i will admit i've seen forums where

three, spammers are very good at tricking forums, especially public  
forums which don't restrict membership, into hosting their spam (or  
hosting links to their spam, which makes google rank their targets  
higher) without forum members or admins being aware that it's  
happened. i can think of four or five different clients i've seen over  
the years, the most recent a few months ago, whose forums were FULL of  
this kind of "rank booster" spam messages.

four, there are enough people in the group who own their own servers  
and could set up a forum if they wanted to, and they are certainly  
welcome to do so, and to post occasional messages on the list which  
tell people about that forum and invite them to join. it couldn't be  
officially sanctioned by LEAP unless the exec board voted on it, but  
if you're serious about wanting a forum, then don't let that stop you.

five, if somebody does set up a forum, somebody is going to have to  
spend some time every day administering that forum- reading every  
message in every thread to make sure people aren't breaking the rules,  
looking for and deleting spam, approving peoples' memberships if  
that's part of the sign-up policy, and dealing with users needing  
help. it's not necessarily a full-time job, but neither is it a  
trivial "set it up and forget it" thing.

i think it's fair to say that one of the reasons LEAP has lasted as  
long, and been as successful as it has been, is because of the mailing  
list. and in seven years, this is the first time the list has been  
down for more than a few hours, and it's not due to any fault on  
phil's part (or myself, or fred, aaron, ralph, or anybody else who  
helps with the server.) this particular problem can be laid squarely  
at the feet of plesk, even if they don't want to admit it.

i also suspect that if somebody *does* start a forum, several people  
on the list won't bother to sign up for it- and some, like myself,  
might have an account on it but would not participate on any kind of  
regular basis.

i'm not going to tell you not to do it... only that if you want LEAP  
to sanction it, the board will have to vote on that, and that i would  
vote "no" on the question if it were to come up right now.


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| John M. Simpson    ---   KG4ZOW   ---    Programmer At Large |
| http://www.jms1.net/                         <jms1 at jms1.net> |
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| http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173 |
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