Der Blog (mk II)

We’ve been having a big argument on Milliways today on the relative merits of web forums and mailing lists. Basically the arguments are:

• In favour of forums:
  

  1. Most people are familiar with their interface
  
  
  2. They have a pretty interface
  
  
  3. You can leaf through old conversations
  
  



• In favour of mailing lists:
  

  1. I’m not forced to use any particular interface; my user experience is not dictated by the admins’ taste in UIs
  
  
  2. (following from the above) I can pick an interface that’s nice and fast
  
  
  3. I don’t have to poll them – my email client tells me when there are new posts
  
  
  4. I can read all the ones I’m interested in in the same place and with the same interface without having to set preferences for every single one individually
  
  
  5. Email is cheap to send, so doesn’t result in much server load
  
  
  6. You can leaf through old conversations with the help of an archive
  
  
  7. You get proper hierarchial threading (as opposed to linear sequences of posts with no structure)
  
  

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