[Haskell-cafe] Re: Maintaining the community

[Jules Bean]

Dave Bayer wrote:
> Malcolm Wallace <Malcolm.Wallace <at> cs.york.ac.uk> writes:
>> Yes, the sheer volume of posts is definitely becoming a problem (for me,
>> at least).
> 
> 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.

I find it incredibly surprising whenever I discover than an otherwise 
sophisticated community has adopted a bulletin board rather than email ;)


> 
> Then I chased somes repies leading to earlier threads, and found bulletin-board
> stye access to our list at
> 
>     http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/
> 
> I much prefer this access, even if I wish the window spit vertically rather than
> horizontally.
> 
> A bulletin board has the capabibility to evolve, e.g. into multiple entry points.

Conversely, a bulletin board cannot be read offline, traps users into a 
single UI (in every case I've used, slow, ugly, and lacking in 
functionality) over which they have no control.

Modern email programs have sophisticated sorting, filtering, scoring, 
processes (not just the MUA, but other programs during the delivery 
chain of my emails score them and sort them); and they allow me to read 
messages while offline, search them locally, etc etc. They have 
customisable key bindings, they allow me to read all of my mailing lists 
in one place, they are scriptable, may support plugins... all of this 
under full user control.

Of course, having a bulletin board interface available for those who 
prefer it is a very nice thing.

Jules