On Friday 12 October 2007 01:51:08 Ben Finney wrote:
On 11-Oct-2007, allergic-to-spam@karlsen.me.uk wrote:
- Are there other tools you would like to have?
Users should have the choice between forums and the mailing list. Whilst I have used mailing lists when I absolutely needed to in the past (and usenet), I find them obnoxious and very unpleasant to use.
You give a lot of detail in your message exploring why you find mailing lists unwelcoming, and I thank you for it.
My main observation is that pretty much all the complaints you have are to do with *user interface*: entirely valid, but IMO not something the FSFE should spend much of its scarce resources on.
Especially since it's already been done! Have a look at http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.org.fsf.europe.discussion -- it provides an NNTP interface to the mailing list, RSS feeds and two web interfaces: one with frames and threads, another with a flat blog-like interface.
Personally, I use the mailing list, but I'm subscribe to the Gmane NNTP interface for many more lists that I only check infrequently. A forum would hardly ever be checked, it's too much effort.