David Artman writes:
>What gave you the impression I was laughing at you, that you would have to
>be discourteous to reply?
It would be discourteous to reply because any appropriate response to
your posturing would be a personal attack. The easiest way to do so
is any one of the more common insults -- which would be distasteful,
both as it would assault the eyes of the uninvolved and undeserving
populace and because it would have no chance of producing a positive
result.
You, personally, by your participation in this community, make it a
far less confortable and pleasant.
You have done it on numerous occasions -- when you try to pressure the
loonies to support one of your ideas, when you attack someone for
running a service to the community, every time the idea of augmenting
or replacing the list is mentioned, and on numerous and uncounted
other occasions.
I appreciate that in nearly all of these situations, you are trying to
be helpful, but your results do not measure up to your desires,
instead, they display the products of a childish and egotistical
attidude.
You are not helping.
Please, stop. Or at least grow up, and accept that not everyone
thinks as you do, or is obligated to behave as you desire. Your mind
does not model reality, and as it is, you make the community worse by
your presence.
>But go ahead and edify me: what would be so "terrible" about moving to
>groupware, because I (and hundreds of millions of professionals and
>hobbiest) don't seem to understand the horrid pitfalls await me (us).
There's no "moving". This is not your grandomother's internet. There
is no single community.
The glory of the modern internet is that anyone can set up anything
they want to set up.
If people want to use it, they will. If it provides a service, it
does. And in general? Many smaller communities with linkages between
them are far, far more effective and useful than fewer larger
communities -- this is the Internet; it's a big place, and it's full
of people.
The only difference between the Icehouse lists (which, btw, are not
built on "1970s technology" -- They're built on Mailman. Mailman
2.1.5, specifically. Mailman 2.1.5 was released in 2004) and any
other forum is that the Looneys are here, that they control the
system, and that they have prononced it the "official" forum.
And guess what? The only people who control this are them. If you
want to convince them, talk to, you know, LL. Not us. Because you're
not going to suddenly convince people happy with one tool that they
want to use another tool (Religous arguments are -so- y1000).
I like forums. I like mailing lists. I like wikis. I love RSS. I'm
addicted to Livejournal. I even still check Usenet, from time to
time. I've got an account on BGG I use on occasion, theough it's
never made its way into my routine. And my day job involves a lot of
technology (all of it running on linux, for various reasons).
If LL were to move their official mailing list to something with a web
forum background, I'd be fine with this. They could even do this
keeping mailman -- via the usenet backend hooked up to a usenet->forum
system, or via one of the mailing list systems people have mentioned
that present a forum frontend on an existing mailing list. But
nothing short of that is going to cause me to move off this list --
because I get a lot more functionality via a mailing list than I do
via a web forum.
Might I add another forum if it existed? Maybe; transaction cost is a
bit part of my time.
If LL decides they want to shut down their existing community and ask
people to join a different one, I'll be disgruntled, but probably join
(hint: they will not do this. To do so would be community suicide).
If they move their list, I'll happily go along with the move.
But if you keep trying to force things down people's throats it will
help nobody. Not even you.
--
Joshua Kronengold (mneme@(io.com, labcats.org)) |\ _,,,--,,_ ,)
--^-- "Did you know, if you increment enough, you /,`.-'`' -, ;-;;'
/\\ get an extra digit?" "I knew," weeps Six. |,4- ) )-,_ ) /\
/-\\\ "We knew. But we had forgotten." '---''(_/--' (_/-'