On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 08:58:10AM +0200, Holger Weiss wrote:
> * loxety <loxety@gmail.com>[2005-09-07 22:32]:
>> I think the gentoo project has a good system of documentation. The
>> forums really help! I wish netbsd had a forum system like the gentoo
>> folks have.
>
> Many people seem to like the idea of using a browser for more or less
> anything; including, but not limited to, reading and writing their
> mail or news, editing text, chatting, administration, and, if such
> a plugin existed, probably also for brewing coffee.  If people take
> the time to learn how mailers, news-readers, editors, IRC clients and
> coffee machines work, they'll of course realize that these tools do
> their job a lot better than any browser could do, as browsers are made
> for, well, browsing hypertext.  For non-technical people, it might
> make sense only having to learn how to use a single application for
> all sorts of tasks, regardless of how inefficient this might be.  But
> I'm a bit surprised that quite a few people who are interested in
> technical stuff (such as Gentoo) seem to prefer forums over lists or
> newsgroups ...

Indeed.  I, personally, hate, hate, hate, hate web based forums.

Someone else made the argument of how about when your only access is via
the web?  Well, what about when your only access is only a text-based
shell?  OK, not as common as web-only access, but still, a legitimate
concern.

With mailing lists and usenet groups, I can use the interface I prefer,
or what is handy.  The command-line (nmh), mutt, pine, a web browser for
web-mail, trn, outlook express, Mozilla, IE, whatever.  I can quickly
sort and thread the messages, search through them using tools I know how
to use, etc.  Some of the lists I'm on even offer downloadable archives
of past messages, if I find a thread I'd like to read via their web
interface, I can grab that month's worth of messages and import them
into my mail files and read it in mutt, threaded, hopping around much
more quickly than any web browser would let me.

Sadly, this is one thing I like about Yahoo!'s groups.  For those of us
that prefer mail-based reading, we can do that, for those of you that
like web-forums, they offer an interface to the same set of messages
that way.  Best of both worlds.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson@bl.org