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.
I think your complaints are far better addressed by providing messages via a standard network protocol — a mailing list or an NNTP forum — and allowing the user the choice of what *program* to use to interact with it. The FSFE shouldn't be expected to be, or employ, experts on user interface design for what is essentially a solved problem.
That way, the conversation isn't balkanised between "those who use mailing lists" and "those who use the web forums"; instead, everyone is using the same communication channel, but the end-point is selected by the individual to match their needs.
I, for one, have exactly the mirror reaction to yours: I find email and NNTP far more inclusive, because I already know how to use the software that interacts with it. If I need a different presentation of the messages, organised in custom ways as you suggest, I can choose software that does so without getting the service provider involved in that process at all.
With a web forum, on the other hand, I have to suffer with whatever lame interface the webmaster chooses and learn a different interface for every different site, and hassle the provider not only for the delivery of messages but also the detailed interaction with them. Instead, of course, I throw my hands up at the effort involved and don't participate at all.
If the forum is, instead, accessible in all its features by a standard protocol with software I *already* know how to use, but isn't necessarily the *same* software everyone else uses, none of use are forced to learn each other's crazy preferences.