What with the amount of discussion we get anyways, "hunting" a small forum won't take much longer than looking through email. And even if you're deleting non-relevant email, you wouldn't have to look at it at all were it on a forum. For example, if I want to have one single discussion about a Chrononauts card, I'll have to join the mailing list and get every single email about Chrononauts that comes through the pipeline. When the conversation ends, I can remove myself from the list and stop the barrage of junk emails, but then I wouldn't receive the message of someone who has something to say on the topic a week or two after. Under a forum system, I can just check that one thread, without bothering to look at the other posts about Chrononauts.
As for me, I have not joined the NanoFictionary list because, although I would be interested to hear about creative NanoBlanks, I don't care to read tons of short stories. So now I get neither. Under a forum system, I could check the section occasionally to see about interested NanoBlanks, and skip over threads about stories.
Further, more people will join a forum than a mailing list. Most people don't want strangers getting their email addresses and sending them emails at every hour of the day on topics that are only mildly interesting. As a result, we only ever get the same 10-20 people piping up on these lists. Forums are less personal, so people are more willing to join.
There's also the involvement aspect. LooneyLabs.com, and especially Wunderland, are very much read-and-watch only. Today's popular websites allow users to get into the website and interact. Our registries as rabbits allow us to post a paragraph and a mug shot, and that's the extent of it. At least a forum gives us an avatar and a signature that may include a colourful and perhaps humorous banner. Come to think of it, Wunderland--being a blog from before the age of blogs--doesn't even have a comments section at the bottom.
I've always wanted LL to have a forum. But when I discovered it didn't, I resigned to join the mailing list. If it weren't for Gmail's conversation view and 2.9 gigabytes that make my mailing list experience very forum-esque, I would have unsubscribed long ago.
On 8/6/07, I <iosef@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
At 01:37 PM 7/08/2007, Anestis Kozakis wrote:
>At 17:09 -0500 07/08/06, James Hazelton wrote:
>>Looney Labs should have a forum anyways--this mailing list system
>>is a pretty old technology. Unfortunately, LL has better things to
>>do with their time now than start up a forum system.
>
>I prefer mailing lists, as the information comes to you, as opposed
>taking time out to hunt for the information yourself.
>
>Mailing lists are not old technology. They are still as relevant as
>they were 20 years ago.
One advantage is that you can quickly delete any non-relevant mail,
and keep any useful. This means that looking for information suffers
less from Signal-to-noise problems.
Iestyn
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