[Haskell-cafe] Re: Maintaining the community

[Bárður Árantsson]

Philippa Cowderoy wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, Dave Bayer wrote:
> 
>> As a newcomer I was stunned that this otherwise very sophisticated 
>> community was using an email list rather than a bulletin board. The 
>> shear torrent of email was impacting my mail program performance.
>>
> 
> This is a cultural thing, and assuming that it's a lack of sophistication 
> on our part is a bad idea - on the contrary, some of the better reasons to 
> avoid a web-based board are entirely about enabling sophistication.
> 
> Boards need polling. Boards force a single user interface on everyone. 
> Boards don't enable local archives. Etc etc etc. With mail, you can pick a 
> client to suit your needs.

Indeed, and if you prefer newsgroups, you can even get a newsgroup
interface with gmane.org.

Incidentally, I've generally found gmane.org to be one of best ways to
manage volume -- like someone said: Usenet/NNTP has already solved many
of the issues with high volume.

-- 
Bardur Arantsson
<bardurREMOVE at THISscientician.net>

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