[mb-users] A ML... and a forum!?

[Alex Dupuy]

mll wrote:
> 
> I stumbled on http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=13560, where
> they allow the forum and the mailing-list to be just 2 ways of displaying
> / broadcasting the same information. Maybe the forum admins could set up
> the same, so that we stop having 2 places for the same topic (like
> [mb_style] and http://forums.musicbrainz.org/viewforum.php?id=5 for
> example).
> 

Kuno Woudt wrote:
> 
> IMO the forum interface would need better threading features to make it
> actually useful, but I guess that is my objection to these types of forums 
> in general (and not something the actual users of the forum are bothered
> by :).
> 
> Perhaps it could work if replies on the forum don't break threading on the 
> mailing list.
> 

There is a forum-style interface to the MB mailing lists at Nabble (e.g.
this thread is at
http://www.nabble.com/A-ML...-and-a-forum%21--tf2756172s2885.html) and this
has existed for several years.  However, the kind of people who like forums
never seemed to be very interested in this (I guess the avatar support was
lacking, and/or there was too much '>' quoted text in the messages, or they
weren't threaded in the way that people who like forums seem to prefer).

I personally use the Nabble forums for replies, since I get the mailing list
as a digest, and replying to that breaks the threading for other people.  I
think there are one or two others who post via the Nabble forums; it's hard
to know how many people use them to read the content on the mailing list.

In practice (and not just for MB) it seems that gatewaying between forums
and mailing lists isn't really very effective.  The social conventions of
the two media are sufficiently different that people from the two sides just
end up annoying each other.  MB could probably do a better job publicizing
the Nabble interface to the mailing lists (maybe a link on the left bar, and
sending searches on the mailing list archives over to Nabble - although that
might be technically difficult) but I don't see much point in trying to
merge the existing forums and mailing lists.  I see the forums as filling a
niche, somewhere in between IRC and the mailing lists, which would not be
well served by trying to combine them with the mailing lists.

@alex
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