The other big thing to remember is that many of us do not have NNTP feeds at work, where e-mail and the web are easy to get to.

-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@caosity.org [mailto:centos-bounces@caosity.org] On Behalf Of Johnny Hughes Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2005 3:05 PM To: CentOS Users Subject: Re: [Centos] NNTP versus web forums

On Sat, 2005-01-08 at 15:53 -0500, Jim Zajkowski wrote:

I see that a number of questions are being answered on the new web forum that is now part of the centos site. And the mailing lists So now there are two places to search, both the forum and the mailing list archives.

True ... but some users like forums, and others like mailing lists. Each has there advantages and disadvantages.

This is just doubles the work required to follow along or find a solution.

I know NNTP isn't sexy, it doesn't allow graphics in posts, it doesn't

have person ratings or cute smileys, and it requires a modicum of competence to use, but it DOES do all of these:

. Allows off-line reading and replying, with an appropriate reader. . Searching. . Reliable way of showing you which threads have new posts. -> I have not yet found a single web forum that did this well.

check the envelope at the left after you login ... if the color is bright it's new to you ... if it is lightened out, it is not new to you.

. Orders of magnitude faster. . Easy to archive. . Small footprint, on-disk and over-network. . Synchronisation to multiple servers, reduced network use. . Bidirectional synchronisation to a mailing list. . Supports authenticated posting, moderation, etc.

--Jim

I like forums ... and I personally think that forums are easier to search. I also think that things like BOLD letters and links like:

[url=xxxxx]Text[/url]

Where xxxxx is a 200 character string, are much more convenient in a forum.

BUT ... I realize that there is no right answer, much like the vi / emacs argument, the GNOME / KDE argument, and the evolution / mutt argument.

However, I think offering both is what a community based distro, with users in mind should do.

I could be wrong though ... my wife reminds me of that quite often :)

-- Johnny Hughes http://www.HughesJR.com/

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