Re: WoW BB Forum?
GreyWyvern wrote:
Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:what's more important than my convenience is that I believe that it would make it more difficult than it already is to carry on interesting conversations. What happens if you decide to visit the site, and find some messages in a topic that does interest you, but they were all posted three weeks ago?
I'm probably being unintentionally rude here, but the mailing list may have been great once, but it is a desert now. I've taken the time to read the archives and I invite you to do so yourselves. The hey-day of the list was 2002-2003 which spans 12 archive pages for 2003, and 9 pages for 2002 (which starts at the end of May of that year).
Not to mention the really intensive discussion that took place in yet another (eGroups) list in the autumn of 2000... I actually wish I'd found this place back then so I could've joined in all that :( So do we. :) How many pages does *all* of 2004 span? Two full pages, and a half a page on either side makes it about three.
One thing we can learn from the past is that the discussion within the independent ring community *can* be very intensive when hold on mailing lists. In the beginning of this decade, it would probably not have made a big difference if we had used web based forums instead, since the interest in webrings was at a peak, people were pissed because Yahoo! had just destroyed the old WebRing, RingSurf had just woken up, and Ringlink was new. People simply wanted to talk! There are likely several reasons why the activity is so much lower today, the most important probably being that Yahoo! hasn't destroyed WebRing.com lately. Maybe you can say that the ring community is a 'mature' community today. WebRing.com has its own forums, so has RingSurf. As regards Ringmaker and Ringlink, there are other forums for providing technical support etc. In addition to that, commercial providers of webring services typically seem to believe that they have no interest in letting their users know about the independent community, so they don't link to us and are even disinclined to mention that we exist. Currently there are 80 addresses subscribed to this list, but 11 of them don't receive emails, which make 69 'real' list members. Messages are arriving instantly to 43 of the members, while 26 members have selected the "digest" option. And, as we all have noticed, few of them post to the list. Assuming that we are now talking about the current list vs. the Mail 2 Forum option, how might a swith to the latter combined list and web board affect the activity? Well, I for one fear that it might have an adverse effect, *especially* now when the general activity is low. Now, even if most list members are passive, they are at least reminded of the list each time somebody posts. If we would implement an installation where receiving of emails is no longer the default, even fewer members would receive such reminders, which in my world would make it more difficult to start and carry on a discussion. What will 2005 bring?
This whole discussion started when somebody called our attention to the fact that this list is not easy to find at the WoW site. I would suggest that we do something about that, i.e. give the subscription page and list archive more attention through more visible links, but that we stick to the pure list for the time being. / Gunnar -- Ringlink http://www.ringlink.org/ "created by ringmasters for ringmasters"
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