On Sun, Mar 10, 2024 at 11:40:05AM -0500, Thomas Cameron wrote: > <Insert obligatory "old man shouting at cloud" meme here> > > Quick definition: fora is the plural of forum, as in a web based forum to > discuss a topic or technology, like https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/. > > Having said that... > > I love mailing lists. I have filters set up they silently go to the correct > mail folder, I can read through them at my leisure, and I only have to deal > with one client - my mail client. My mail client defaults to sane viewing > rules, threaded, in the order I prefer. It's the same experience across > every mailing list I'm a member of. I love that. It's very > accessibility-friendly. Yep. Same here. However, realize that you spend a long time setting all that up. The subscriptions, filtering, how things look in your email client, etc. For someone new or just wanting to ask a question or two, lists are horrible. > I hate using fora. I generally have to open a separate tab for each forum > I'm on, and I'm on a LOT. And I have to go out of my way to even remember > all the fora I am a member of. For those of us who are members of a bunch, > it's kind of a beating - especially if you're an ADHD person, like me. I get > that I can (sometimes) set up email notifications when there are responses > to my posts or comments, but... if we're already emailing forum members, why > the heck don't we just use email lists? Because it's not great for new people/casual questions, it lacks ability to do things like merge threads that are about the same thing, etc. It's easy to spam lists, harder to do so on a fora. email is becoming more and more difficult due to the giant walled gardens of gmail/microsoft and I could go on... > I also love that I see interesting problems on mailing lists that I'd never > thought of or dealt with, and it's right there, in the list's mail folder. I > learn a LOT perusing those messages. It's there, I can easily read through > the threads when I get a minute. And I don't have to remember to fire up a > new browser tab to parse them. > > The whole "fora are an archive" argument is kinda nonsensical, since mailing > lists are generally archived on the web, as well. In my experience, mailing > list archives are easier to search than a forum. > > I get the sense that moving from email lists to fora was a move to force > folks to go to a web site to drive advertising. I kinda hate that. When Red > Hat moved from email lists to fora (log in required), I got the sense that > it was really to gather information about who was interacting with their web > site. Ditto pretty much every other vendor who moved from email lists to web > based fora - this isn't a Red Hat or Fedora specific thing. That might be a general trend (I don't know), but has nothing to do with Fedora's discourse instance. There's no ads or extra monitoring that I can think of. > Am I the only one who feels this way? Has the day finally come where I'm > just old and set in my ways? Are there others who prefer mailing lists to > fora? > > To be clear, I am not bashing fora, per se - I'm just saying that for me, > they're not NEARLY as easy to deal with as email lists. If you like fora, > that's awesome. I'm not attacking you. Let's nip that in the bud. I'm not > looking for a flame war, just trying to see if other feel the same way. > Let's keep it civil. So, I agree with you about the push vs pull factor, so I interact with discussion.fedoraproject.org via email. :) https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/guide-to-interacting-with-this-site-by-email/25960 You can decide what tags you want to 'subscribe' to, it sends emails with list-id headers, you can filter them, reply to them, etc. There are some drawbacks: If you want to start a thread you have to do that with the web interface (so you can specify the tags), etc. Of course that won't work for many, but for people who have a large email infrastructure setup it might be a better way to interact with it. kevin
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