Firstly, I'd like to say that in its current form this list works ok. Not
perfect, but ok.
I don't know what you mean by "information ... being in one long, hard to read
string in each email". Are you referring to daily digest emails? If so, can't
you switch to individual emails?
In my opinion, digest mode is the cause of several problems we have. Firstly,
digest mode readers have difficulty replying, and often end up not quoting any
of the material they're discussing, which can make it hard to follow the
conversation, and sometimes put in a different subject line to the original
email.
Those are the more visible problems. A less visible problem is that if you
don't reply to an individual email, the internal message-id of the email is
different, so the archives thread it wrongly, or not at all. It's quite common
to search the archives, and find that not all the replies have been associated
with the thread. If you reply to an individual email, it gets threaded
correctly even if you change the subject line.
Another problem is that digest readers have to scroll through every email to
see which ones are worth reading. It suspect this makes them grouchy whenever
an uninteresting thread goes on too long.
I have used birding forums like birdforum.net. While the grouping of threads
into subforums is neat, sometimes it means that not many people read your
messages, because there are simply too many subforums for everyone to read.
That site has so many readers that this splitting is necessary, but this isn't
true with birding-aus, the number of contributors is small enough for it all to
be together, and we benefit from everyone reading everything. There are times,
of course, when the waffling can get a bit much, but they quickly pass.
In short, I'd say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I think digest mode is
broke, and we'd benefit from getting rid of it, but I'm sure the people who use
it have their reasons. There is actually an alternative Australian birding
forum, I forget the URL, but after it started, it seems most people preferred
to stay with this list.
Peter Shute
Clair Wenborn wrote on Wednesday, 27 January 2010 12:26 PM:
> Hi All,
>
> I am wondering if it has ever been suggested that birding-aus change
> its format and become a forum? Readers of the digest could still
> receive posts as emails if they wished and the archives would be more
> searcher friendly.
> Information would be categorised together and easy to refer back to
> instead of being in one long, hard to read string in each email.
> Users can then read the categories and threads that they are
> interested in and save time instead of reading each subject heading.
> Security need not be an issue as the forum could be private and
> moderators would be able to see who is logging on. Or certain
> sections of the forum like locations and sightings could only be
> accessed by approved users. Of course it would be up to the list
> owner and the majority of users. Just a suggestion...what does
> everyone think?
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