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Michael Cumming wrote:
Well, we could debate the relative merits of one means of communicating versus another to no end. The fact is that mail lists are in decline and the reasons are obvious. The replies are on the list are not sample of the real world as the list has pre-selected it self to those who are still willing to use this method to communicate. As suggested, maybe some of the people here like that.
Michael, please consider that this is a list for technical discussion by software developers. Although I don't believe it myself, it may very well be true that web forums are increasing at a faster rate than plain lists. This may simply reflect that non-technical discussions are on the rise. I would argue that within technical communities, the use of mailing list is certainly not declining.
The needs of these two types of users is different. I acknowledge the ease of use of web forums for non-technical people. But technical people tend to need to follow a great many discussions (as I said, I'm on 25 mailing lists myself). Even with an RSS aggregator, if I had to hop around to 25 different web sites to read messages, and perhaps learn several different navigation interfaces, I'd be pulling my hair out.
Regards, -John -- http://giftfile.org/ :: giftfile project