[ubuntu-uk] Uk Loco team forums

[Alan Pope]

On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 06:56:21PM +0000, Tony Arnold wrote:
> Nik,
> 
> Nicholas Butler wrote:
> 
> > My personal preferences are to use the Mailing list, however if a Forum 
> > exists I will make sure I drop in and keep an eye on it and let people 
> > know about the mailing list and the archvies and the thriving 
> > communication we have here as well as the IRC Channels.
> > 
> > Can I assume this has been the consensus of the group ?
> 
> Me preference is for the mailing list, but I support the creation of a
> forum too. If it can be integrated with the list, even better.
> 

Indeed. If there is no integration between forum and list then there *will* be fragmentation of 
the "membership". There will be conversations that happen on the forums which people on the 
mailing list never see and vice versa. There will likely be dilution of conversations as people 
won't reply in one medium because they've seen similar replies on the other. 

This isn't just my opinion, this is what I've seen happen for many groups who have run a mailing 
list and forum side by side. Many people who are familiar with one method stick with it, rightly 
or wrongly.

Those of us who are actually committed to doing good things for Ubuntu-UK will end up having to 
spend even more of our own time than we already do keeping up with threads in multiple 
locations. In my view this is sub-optimal.

Another non-FLOSS community I am a member of recently switched from mailing list to forums and 
instantly I was unable to devote any time to the communication as a result. Whilst they did in 
fact go some way to integrate the forums with the mailing list there was a fundamental flaw. 
They had multiple forums. Each forum had to be separately subscribed to in order to receive the 
posts as emails. When a new forum was created the mailing list members had no idea and went on 
in complete ignorance of conversations happening in forums they weren't in.

> I think we could spend months discussing this, so I suggest we get on,
> create the forum and then review it in 6 months time and see how it's going.
> 

I can see that there is a large contingent on the web for whom mailing lists are somehow scary 
and intimidating. And for that reason I can totally understand why they want a forum. What irks 
me more than anything is the assertion that somehow forums are better than mailing lists for 
those of us that are actually pretty handy with ssh and an email client.

I also fail to see what the remit of those forums would be. At the moment it seems to me that 
there is the assertion that a forum should be created "because we can" not because there is some 
burning need to do so.

What will the new forums mandate be? The same as this mailing list or something different?

Of course there's nothing I can say that can disuade anyone from creating these forums, I'm just 
voicing my concerns before the forums get established.

Cheers,
Al.