Mail list vs. forums

[Dave Harmon]

One of the things I don't like about forums like RCU and RunRyder is a
lot of anonymous users beating up on people that ask questions, offer
their experience with something or give their opinion. I have noticed
that many or all of the members of this list that post on forums are
mature enough to sign their own name to their messages....and that's a
really good thing.

I have noticed on RCU that the moderator on occasion will lock the topic
when the conversation gets a little heated or goes in a direction the
moderator does not like.............................
That ain't gonna happen here.....fortunately!!

Then there are the trolls....intentionally causing trouble and arguments
between others then stepping out of the conversation....also done
anonymously for the most part.

PM or private messages is another pain.....you can't email directly
because for the most part email addresses are not shown so you have to
go to the forum, log in then actively seek out messages using their
cumbersome PM instead of the list server like this one that sends all
messages and you just delete what you don't want to keep.
The forum style takes much more time to use and mess around with.

Every email account has some space available to upload pictures on your
own page.....I've never done it but I know its available....so if anyone
has anything they want to show or ask questions about they just post the
link and wait for any comments.

Yesterday I tried my best to use the Yahoo forum that was recently set
up but in trying to get logged on I had to have an alternate email
address so Yahoo could send me messages.....I don't want any messages
from them and I don't have or want an alternate email address.
It turned out to be unnecessary anyway because there have been only 2
posts in a week.
Hardly any before that since it was setup.
I wanted to see the poll but then again.....polls don't mean much anyway
because many folks on this list indicated that they didn't want to
change the reply button.....but the moderator did it anyway....because
he wanted to!

I think everything should stay the same as it is now and stop trying to
jerk things around all the time.


Regards

Dave Harmon
NSRCA 586
K6XYZ[at]valornet[dot]com
Broken Arrow, Ok.

-----Original Message-----
From: discussion-request at nsrca.org [mailto:discussion-request at nsrca.org]
On Behalf Of Chris Moon
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 8:51 AM
To: discussion at nsrca.org
Subject: Mail list vs. forums

The software to run the bulletin board or "forums" can be had free.    
http://www.phpbb.com/
The only question is what will the traffic do to costs to run our site 
server.  I think an in house hosting would probably be better than RCU 
only because some of the postings here are just in-house bickering and 
doesn't need to be hashed out in a freely open plane like RCU.  The 
upside is huge in that we can post pics and contest flyers.  It would be

easier to sort though what you want and don't want to read, and if 
everyone remembers all of the problems we had last yr with email viruses

and peoples' email addresses getting spoofed, this security issued would

disappear.  I'm sure most people don't really like the idea of having 
their email address on the computers of hundreds of people each time 
they post to the email list.
If the bandwidth costs are not prohibitive, why not run a parallel 
system for a while and see what everyone likes best??

Chris
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