Re: The future of the Lua Forums

[Coda Highland <chighland@...>]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Rob Kendrick <rjek@rjek.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 01:21:48PM -0700, Coda Highland wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 1:18 PM, Pierre Chapuis <catwell@archlinux.us> wrote:
>> > I am not sure writing new forum software is a good idea.
>>
>> While I agree with you in the sense that this is a very large wheel to
>> be reinventing, I unfortunately can't recommend any other existing
>> forum software because they all have major problems of some sense or
>> another. (If I *had* to recommend one, it'd probably be vBulletin, but
>> that's not free.)
>
> I've never understood the attraction of web fora; the only advantage I
> can see over mailing lists is that they have a web interface; and that
> can be easily overcome by using webmail and having a searchable archive.

You'd have to REALLY push hard to get your typical user to know that a
mailing list has a searchable archive.

Furthermore a web forum has a more hierarchical organization than a
mailing list; at best, a ML is threaded (assuming someone's MUA
doesn't screw that up) while a forum can be categorized at varying
levels of granularity.

Consistent formatting from user to user is a nice plus.

Being able to turn off signature blocks is nice. ;) Also, never
getting vacation auto-responders and never having to see bogus
"CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION" messages.

The ability to edit previous posts is not to be overlooked -- how
often have you been looking over a past message and realized you made
a mistake, or just want to add a minor point to it without having to
flag up a message with the same notification level as a full-blown
comment, or you want to REMOVE factually-inaccurate information to
avoid confusing future readers?

Moderation on a forum is better, too, for largely the same points --
the content can be more carefully managed instead of having it be
plastered all over a hundred mailboxes within seconds.

And then back on the organizational topic, forums aren't e-mail and
therefore don't trigger incoming e-mail notifications (unless you WANT
it to), and a single highly-active thread flood can't flood your
mailbox.

/s/ Adam