Forum?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 15, 2011, at 13:14, Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

> Ryan Schmidt writes:
> 
>> I like mailing lists better because the conversation is delivered
>> directly to me without me having to do anything, beyond having my
>> email program open, which I generally already do. I hear the "new
>> message" sound and can see that new messages have arrived in the
>> folders into which I sort my mailing list messages.
>> 
> I prefer mailing lists that have NNTP servers attached, so I don't have
> to pull down anything I don't want to read.

I can see how that would be nice in some cases.

On the other hand, I like having the messages on my laptop already, so that I can read and reply to them even when I'm offline.


>> Whereas with a forum, I have to constantly go visit the forum web
>> site to see if any new messages have arrived. I seldom remember to
>> do so.
> 
> It has gotten better with RSS feeds.

Perhaps. I still don't use RSS for much. But RSS feeds are published on web servers, and RSS clients have to periodically request the new RSS feed from the server to see if there's anything new. You either waste a lot of your bandwidth and the server's by polling the RSS feed often, or there's quite a delay between the time a new post is available and the time you're made aware about it. Modern IMAP mail servers, on the other hand, can push new messages to your email program the moment they arrive; I receive new mailing list messages seconds after they were sent, not minutes or hours later.