> That's because email is STILL the very best collaboration tool available: > nothing else even comes close. > > 1. It's low-bandwidth. > 2. It can be utilized offline. > 3. It's asynchronous. > 4. It can be used with the UI (mail client) of the participant's choice, > as long as that mail client is reasonably well-behaved. > 5. It automatically builds an archive. > 6. Individual participants can build their own archives. > 7. Which means that they can also search those archives with the > mechanism of THEIR choice rather than one forced on them. > 8. Which means that (taken as an aggregate) there are numerous ways > to ensure the completeness and integrity of the archives. > 9. It scales magnificently. > 10. Privacy/security issues are minimized. > 11. Attacks/abuse/etc. against it are well-understood and easy to handle. > 12. It's extremely fault- and delay-tolerant. > 13. It's push, not pull. > 14. It's highly portable, e.g., list-rehosting and list software upgrading > or changing are all relatively painless processes. > 15. There are some very good choices for well-supported, mature, > stable, open-source software to manage it. > 16. (more which I'll omit for now) > > Moving to web-based collaboration would be a massive downgrade: it's > a truly horrible idea. Absolutely. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to move from email to an ‘improved' system that would require me to have a web browser window open (or, more accurately, multiple web browser windows open - one for each ‘forum’ that I’m at least vaguely interested in), and hope that these windows update properly (without sending my browser’s CPU usage into the stratosphere) so that I don’t miss any notifications. Although many ‘hipsters’ these days might not like email, an email address seems like a very low bar to require for participation in the IETF. Ross.