Ponniyin Selvan Varalaatru Peravai

Dear SPS Sir,
With the flow of messages, I feel that we should transform the proceedings of
the group into a forum style where a subject can be assigned to a forum stream
and people write related messages in that stream only. This way we will keep all
related text about a subject at one place. As of now, I feel it is very
difficult to search content in archives of the group.

@ Thiru – as you involved in similar activities, do you see any simple solution
which can simulate a forum like pattern for discussions in this group.

I really appreciate the way we discuss things, and after the Sunday meet,
messages are flowing like Kaveri during rains . But other important task is to
group these discussion in proper manner, otherwise we lose all what we discuss.
And I feel it very difficult to search related texts in archives, I hope other
members also face similar difficulties.

Dear Sir

As we discussed, we will start the forum soon,regarding this my brother will call u sir

Hi,

involved with. Though the people in the group are familiar with forums, they
did not find it easy to use. No one complained, but the traffic came down
sharply and we were forced to restore groups for communication.

Sivaram, members who just read the conversations can still get them as
email, those who actively participate in the conversation can use the forum.
Win Win situation.

2011/7/8 Sivaram Kannan

>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> involved with. Though the people in the group are familiar with forums, they
> did not find it easy to use. No one complained, but the traffic came down
> sharply and we were forced to restore groups for communication.
>
> Thanks,
> ./Siva
>
>

A real case of information fragmentation

Each of these – yahoo groups, google groups and forums – has its own
plus and minus points. Yahoo group is ideal for those who want to access
the group almost every day and are interested in most of the topics, but
lacks in linking specific and related topics. Google group is good for
keeping related messages in a easily accessible thread, but is a pain to
access the latest message; of course for those who access the group
frequently, this grouping is not convenient as each thread has to be
opened and checked for new messages. A forum is ideal when topics lend
themselves to classification – and users can quickly jump to topics of
interest.
I too feel that our group may not work well as a forum.

Dear Thiru
We have been through this every few years, but the problem is acceptability. inspite of repeated requests we still struggle to get members to change Subject to enable archiving but that proves difficult. In the days I had the time I used collate them together but that is the problem
sri

If I can stop one heart from breaking,I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin, Into his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Emily Dickinson

To: [email protected]

Hi all,

What’s the real difference between forums and mailing lists?

a) In a forum, you have topics split off into subjects, while in a mailing
list, the subject is for each post. Nevertheless, a good mail client
organizes mails into threads (GMail does it for me, and I believe that
Outlook and some others do too), so that particular benefit of forums is
gone.

b) Moderation is supposedly easier in a forum; I have to confess that I
don’t see that as such a primary motive – extreme moderation to ensure that
every post is on-topic is often counter-productive, as the conversation
develops and side-topics can lead to interesting areas.

c) A mailing list has a much lower barrier of entry! It’s convenient for new
people to sign up to, and to view all posts on the same interface as their
other mails. There’s no need to go to a specific website to see everything.
It’s also easy to forward the discussion to people who are not currently in
the list; and everyone can just do “reply all” to get mails to those
outsiders. I don’t think we currently use the list in this way, but the
possibility exists.

d) It’s easier to take the discussion off-line in a mailing list. Reply to
the person/people you want to reply to, and the whole thing becomes private.
This is _Very Important_, since often, you want to check with others before
shooting off with odd theories and derailing the discussion.

e) Archiving is a little more difficult in a mailing list; archives are
there, but are not categorized, tagged or easily searchable. Especially in
Yahoo groups. A forum is probably better there.

I think the important thing to remember is that a forum or a mailing list is
a record of a conversation, not a copper-plate edict. It’s necessarily
unstructured, and the more unstructured, the better, in my opinion. What we
really seem to need is a way to distill and organize the results of the
discussion into an easily indexed, searchable format.

How we’re going to do that, I have to confess, is not something I have an
answer for! I think, however, the answer may lie in more than one particular
format for discussion and archiving. Maybe a forum as well as a mailing
list? Maybe a button on the forum to send the topic to others? Maybe a wiki
where we can paste data? Blogs?

Shash