What do you think of web forums instead of newsgroups?

I greatly appreciate the change, for now I can post my thoughts.  I have read the newsgroups for years, but whenever I tried to post a comment, either I wasn't able to do so (technical problems), or (once I thought I got it working) I was afraid of releasing my email address into the land of spammers.  So, though it may be more cumbersome a medium, I feel now empowered to join in the conversation and add my $.02 when appropriate.

Hmmm. Not bad, not bad at all. It's very similar to the only other
message board I use so personally it won't be hard for me to get
used to.

You do need a way to link directly to the last page of a
thread though (a "Last Reply" link). Most people just want to see new
replies once a thread gets going and those extra steps required
(linking to the top of the thread and then navigating with the page
buttons at the bottom) are kind of annoying.

You need a spellcheck as well. I don't know about you but I don't want people knowing what a horrible speller I am.

A few comments on first use.

Advantages:

1. Rich Content. Get to see pictures of Dave's TV box. I don't know how many times I have woken up at night wondering about this
2. Portable. Can log on anywhere to see the forums with my settings
3. Perhaps it is easier and more likely that people will trim their replies and not include everthing ever written on a thread in the next reply.
4. Richer formatting.
5. Avatar potentially lets you see pictures of who you are conversing with.

Disadvantages/ Questions

1. The "recent topics" listing on the first page - is there a way to indicate which forum the post is from.
2. Is there a way to have your editing and viewing settings listed on one
   screen for all forums. EG I only want to see topics with new posts when
   I go into a forum. It seems I have to go to each forum individually and remember
   which forums I have set the filter on and which ones I haven't. The same is true for RSS subscriptions
3. When viewing a topic, how do you tell which posts you read last time when you next go into it? Is this even possible with a forum, as there can be many posts on a screen and just because you have the screen visible, does not mean you read the bottom post on that screen.
4. RSS solves the problem of knowing which posts you have read, but in the reader I use (google reader) you loose the ability to group the various replies by thread.
5. The "email me" replies to this post box worries me. If I make a few posts and forget to uncheck this, it seems that I will have an open ended subscription to things which will spam me till the day I die.Given how you set up subscriptions and settings, it seems that this will be a killer to manage.
6. Given my understanding, I now have to use 3 tools to track what used to be tracked with the news reader in a single place:
   1. Web browser to set up subscriptions and see posts in context of a thread. No knowledge of which are new/old from the last time I viewed the thread is available.
   2. RSS reader to group new posts into forums.
   3. email to easily track replies to my posts

Awkward to use . . . hardto discern threads and pick and choose posets to read or ignore

You need a spellcheck as well. I don't know about you but I don't want people knowing what a horrible speller I am.

What about the Firefox spellchecker? It works quite well.

Bohuslav

No problem getting logged in.

Cool video.. this seems to be working. Will just have to get used to the change.

Jim

Hi Wolfgang,

What resolution are you running at on your monitor ?  I only get a horizontal scroll if I drop to 800x600 on a 19inch monitor.  Anything greater and the horizontal scroll goes away.... even if I select largest for text size from view menu.

Richard,

Wolfgang,

You can edit your posts by clicking the "More" button next to the "Reply" button at the top of the page. I don't see an option to delete.

Hmn ... I did not see that under "More" on my post from yesterday ... but do see it now with the post from today ...strange.  Indeed, I do not see a "delete" either ... 

I would have thought the "edit" and "delete" would be right next to "reply" on one's own posts ...

In addition, that need for horizontal scroll is very irritating ... and I haven't even set any fonts to large etc.  It looks like this forum requires a 21" monitor and 1900x1600 resolution ?  

Well ...yet another forum software to get used to   :-(    

 

Personally, I greatly prefer the NGs because they're much easier to see what you want to see quickly and skip the others, and it allows me to prefetch and mass download attachments on the files newsgroup (I haven't tried downloading here yet).

However, I think forums probably are the way to go into the future for most users, since they're more familiar and easier to figure out to typical web/pc users.  Maybe you can keep some of the more technical NGs going (automation, files, etc) while moving things like suggestions primarily to the forums?

I have actively followed newsgroups for four years. There are both advantages and disadvantages to newsgroups/forums. I had Thunderbird set to only show unread messages. I normally only looked at new messages and only rarely went back to see previous messages. Newsgroups are easy to see what is new and what you haven't read. The disadvantage is that everything needed to be downloaded to the computer.

There were at a given time about 20 who were actively posting and another 50 who toasted sporadically.  Only a few of those who were posting four years ago are still posting. The group was fluid yet developed a common bond relationship.  Many will miss this relationship.

It was also easy to be selective on what one read on a topic. When there were 50-60 posts on a topic, I soon learned who would make the most significant comments. I had Thunderbird set to mark all messages as read, when I exited the program. I read less than half of the messages normally. It was efficient way for an active reader to follow every thread.

Forums are web based and likely will attract more followers, especially the occasional reader. They will look for the topic that interests them. It will be big advantage to those who want to search out a particular topic. But when you read a thread you end up needing to read every message in that thread.  For example, I  read every post written by Bob Pritchett. Bob is an effective communicator and it was good way to know the opinion of the president. The home page only shows the last one to post. It doesn't show the sporadic post written by Bob, unless he was the last one to post. His posts always generate replies and so he is not likely to be listed as the last one who posted.

Hopefully web groups will attract less spam. That happened from time to time on the newsgroups.