On 9/21/06, Misha Aizatulin
My concern about introducing a web forum would be that it is yet another place I have to search every time I need information (besides the haskell report, compiler docs and tracker, 2 wikis and the mailing lists :)
That probably speaks to an effort for better organization of the information rather than banning a way to create more.
So setting up a web forum would only be good if it can do something a mailing list cannot do.
Well there's one thing that a web forum can do that a mailing list can never do, which is provide a mechanism for those who like web forums better than mailing lists. How important that is really depends on how many people would rather use a web forum than a mailing list. Many of the responses so far have decried web forums in preference to mailing lists, but this is, after all, a mailing list.
- searchability. I wouldn't agree - I can download the whole contents of a mailing list from gmane and search it in my mail client - goes way faster than in a forum.
A similar mechanism could be implemented for a web forum. The data is just sitting in a database, after all. An format for easy downloading and searching would probably not be difficult. I personally don't care either way. I'm happy with the mailing list. But I know of many people that do prefer web forums, and they seem to be perceived as a lower barrier to entry, even if that isn't actually true. I would probably read both if both existed. Kurt