[Haskell-cafe] Re: Maintaining the community

[Philippa Cowderoy]

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.

> A bulletin board has the capabibility to evolve, e.g. into multiple 
> entry points.
> 

So does a mailing list when you own the domain it's hosted on.

-- 
flippa at flippac.org

Sometimes you gotta fight fire with fire. Most
of the time you just get burnt worse though.