Philippa Cowderoy wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jul 2007, Dave Bayer wrote:
As a newcomer I was stunned that this otherwise very sophisticated community was using an email list rather than a bulletin board. The shear torrent of email was impacting my mail program performance.
This is a cultural thing, and assuming that it's a lack of sophistication on our part is a bad idea - on the contrary, some of the better reasons to avoid a web-based board are entirely about enabling sophistication.
Boards need polling. Boards force a single user interface on everyone. Boards don't enable local archives. Etc etc etc. With mail, you can pick a client to suit your needs.
Indeed, and if you prefer newsgroups, you can even get a newsgroup
interface with gmane.org.
Incidentally, I've generally found gmane.org to be one of best ways to
manage volume -- like someone said: Usenet/NNTP has already solved many
of the issues with high volume.
--
Bardur Arantsson