What do you think of web forums instead of newsgroups?

Yay, forums! Particularly with RSS feeds and especially if the "Search this site" box (above right) is quick.

I really like the newsgroups because my email program (Thunderbird) gets all the headers automatically while I'm doing other work and arranges threads very nicely. I've yet to see a web post system that has a good thread navigation system and is as fast as the newsreader for finding and displaying interesting threads and knowing when someone has responded to my post or added a new one to a thread I'm interested in. I'm open to finding it, but if this is like the many other web posting systems I've used, I will end up not using it very often for the reasons I've given.

I didn't like the sign-in throwing me into the Logos.com web site and having to use the Back button to get here. Presumably all the forum management features are THERE, but this needs to be done via the forum pages.

I hope pictures (avatars?) are not mandatory as I dislike even that much personalisation.

Let's see what this (Quick Reply) looks like with a picture of my TV.

I like forums, access from any browser, no newsreader needed. I also like the new "look and feel" that emulates the style of the new videos. Very bright, clean, and uncluttered, I'm looking forward to the style being adapted on the other company websites.

Paul

Initial impression, this seems nice enough. I like the newsgroups but there are advantages to doing things on the web. In the end I think the web forums will better serve more people, and thus far the implementation of them appears to be good.

I still prefer the newsgroups. So much less real estate to navigate for the same information. As another poster, said, navigating the newsgroups is much easier. I also use Thunderbird and check the newsgroups as often as I check my email. I'm sure I'll use the forums less than the newsgroups. I hope the newsgroups stay.

Willing to give it a try. The adavantage is I can view from any computer connected to the web. I switched to Chrome. Explorer is blocking me.

I've used forums for news with other software companies. I can certainly get used to them with Logos. And, that the login is already set to know me when I got here is a plus.

I have enjoyed the threads view in OE, and the ability to view years of messages. I hope we'll be able to retain this archieve feature. I just ignore the spammers -- they're a nuisance, but I can kill file them and that's it (except that last batch that used a slightly different iteration of the login for each section of the newsgroups. Since they have to login to the forums, I would hope we could keep these children out of forums.

I don't see the validity of the complaints of having to have a reader -- maybe the Mac community doesn't have one readily available, and perhaps Windose users don't like M$ software -- but since OE (and even LiveMail now) have been built into the basic OS software (at some level) for (literally) years -- well, that dog just don't hunt. I've been able to access the newsgroups anywhere I have been, at home, on the road, at my kid's place.

I think the new forum system is simply an admition that we've move beyond the technology of 15 plus years ago. And, I guess even for us old heads, it's time to come a bit into the 21st c.

Just my two cents, but as always Bob, thanks for asking

Blessings -- Dale

P.S. I'd sure like to have a way to change the default "EMail me..." caveat at the end -- I doubt I'd ever want that, and I'd hate to think I have to manually un/deselete this option every time

Go for it Bob.  Easier to get to from multiple locations when travelling.

Keep it up.

Your stuff just keeps getting better!

Just a test with a short video.

0763.f-35inharrowingordeal.wmv

Terrible. Way too slow to navigate. Deliver us from this evil, Lord!

I personally prefer NNTP newsgroups, as they are very efficient. HOWEVER, a web based newsgroup will encourage wider participation of Logos users. NNTP is a little bit on the techie side and many users have never used USENET type news, but on the other hand everyone who has an internet connection pretty much knows how to use a browser.

Good job Logos! This is a great day to see this finally going!

Thank you Bob for asking. I got used to newsgrougs way but I think web-based forums are more usual for more people. I have no problem with it. It looks nice here and I hope all guys from newsgroups will move here. I would miss them very much [:)]

Have a great day.

Bohuslav

Wonderful idea wish you had done it sooner it is the way to go.

Stephen Schultz

I like both, but I love the fact that the post can be sent via RSS.

I'm interested in your feedback on our new web forums.

Do you prefer this to the NNTP newsgroups? Are there advantages/disadvantages?

What I do not like
about forums is that all the responses are displayed sequentially.
 Using newsgroup, we can see who responded to whom and was able to follow
the conversation.  With everything being listed sequentially, the conversational
portion is lost.

My issues with the use of the forum have already been posted. But a decision will have to be made wrt use of the newsgroups. I would start to close down the less frequently used ones ASAP e.g. all the lbx.xxx ones, test, wiki, logos2x, Setup - until only General, Suggestions, Beta and Macintosh remain! Then you must decide when you (Logos) stop posting announcements in Beta and close that down!

Think about moving all the Suggestions into the web forum and then close that down! Likewise with Macintosh.

Finally, close General [8o|]

I prefer the newsgroup format, much better. I like opening my Windows Mail and go down to the news reader section and read the ones that I like to read and response.

For me it is a big NO!

God Bless
GeorgeT

One of the reasons that I do not like the forums is that invalid statistics are being posted.  Here are the forums that I see available:

As you can see, the stats at the bottom of the image report 21 threads.  I only see the five threads listed under "Threads/Posts".   If there are more than the four forums listed here, that might explain the descripancy - but I cannot find additional forums. 

Back to the newsgroups - I hope.

Yours because His,

Floyd

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

Hello

I'm interested in your feedback on our new web forums.

Do you prefer this to the NNTP newsgroups? Are there advantages/disadvantages?

yes, I normally prefer forum to newsgroup 

There's a "sign in & redirect to forum" trouble which someone else already mentioned .... the problem could perhaps be easily solved by making sure that the list of links to various areas of the Logos website which is located at the top left corner is the same in all areas of the website (because currently the link to "forums" is missing on the sign-in page and the main section of the Logos website.

I also have difficulties to read the forum "as is" with the current default font-size and theme ... will need to check out if there are options in the personal profile for making adjustments to achieve better readability

Thanks for making forums available

Cheers,

Wolfgang

I'm interested in your feedback on our new web forums.

Do you prefer this to the NNTP newsgroups? Are there advantages/disadvantages?

After playing around and trying to make this work a bit more the way I'd like it to, I want to share some continuing observations:

Disadvantages:

One obvious difference is that in Thunderbird, I can quickly scan a threaded discussion list, and visually determine how the discussion is moving. I can't seem to find a way to sort these posts by thread. (Filter: "Threaded by Author" doesn't seem to change anything.) The last post goes to the bottom regardless of to whom the poster is responding. Clunky.

Too few posts on one page, with no way to change this.

Each post uses up considerably more screen real estate than an NNTP post.

I can set Thunderbird to check for new posts every 'n' minutes. I may be able to do that with RSS feeds too (though I haven't been able to get them to work yet).

In Thunderbird I have a setting to mark all posts from logos.com as bold & red. That way I can easily see an official response/post in the middle of a discussion, or an official announcement, query, etc., from Logos. I don't see a way to do this here.

With breeches in the newsgroups recently, I'm concerned that eventually we may see a jpeg displayed that we ought not to see. At least with most NNTP readers, you have to choose to view the picture.

Advantages:

You can edit your own posts. That's pretty cool.

Probably easier for some (most) people to participate.

You can make your posts look prettier (which could also be listed under disadvantages for some.)

What do I prefer?

For me, NNTP is a simpler and more elegant way to go. The fact that some people can't use this simple technology that's been around since before web browsers baffles me. It's as easy to setup and use as email. What's the problem? Then again, more people use MSWord than WordPerfect too (which though behind in some respects (unicode,e.g.) is still way ahead in others).

There are a few software companies that only have forums (no NNTP groups). I hardly use them -- mostly because it just takes too much time to find anything useful. I am quite certain that my use of these groups will diminish greatly, if Logos switches to a forums only approach.

Please keep the NNTP groups for the 1st year with the forums and see how it goes. Maybe "both and" will be a better solution than "either, or."

Help Needed:

I looked at my options for my profile and I really don't know what some of the options are.

Under "Profile Options:"

What might I put in the "Gallery" box -- and why would that be helpful in these groups?

What happens if I put an email address in my Public Email box? Does this make it available to anyone on this group, or is it open to a larger public audience?

What are shared RSS feeds? And why would I want to share them, or know about anyone else's RSS feeds?

Under "Site Options:"

What is the difference between a Standard and and Enhanced Content Editor?

What does "Display in members list?" mean? Display what?

What are "Mouse-over Popups?"

What Panels are Collapsible?

What does "Enable Conversation/Comment Notifications" actually do that's different from the Email notifications below?

Why doesn't the "Items per-Page in Control Pallen grids" seem to change anything? (I'd love to see 100 posts per page, rather than the default 15 or so, since loading a new screen takes too much time).

Under Email Configuration:

How does "Receive Emails" differ from "Send Notifications?"

One problem with the newsgroups is that you won't get any feedback or questions from the less techie masses. Another problem with NNTP is that if you want to search the newsgroups in your reader for a topic previously discussed, you have to download ALL of the discussions for the past WHO KNOWS how long. Not a problem for those nerds (a proud label [;)]) who are on the newsgroups every day. But it's not really feasible for those who rarely check in from time to time or pop on to find an answer.

It's funny and ironic to find tech-nerd dinosaurs. [read in a shaky cartoon old man voice] "Back in my day, we did just fine with NNTP. We didn't need all your fancy formatting and pictures. We used our imaginations. AND WE LIKED IT!" I bet some people are still eagerly hanging on to boxes of punch cards, just waiting for Y2K to strike again. I'm sure I'll be there some day.

I say, "more success to web forums!"

With that said, I think at least one thing on the web forum could be made a bit clearer. Instead of having to reply to a specific post in a thread, there should be a general "post reply" box at the bottom of the page.

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

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.

I can't help but notice that there is no way to attach files to posts nor any other method for sharing files on this site. Now there's a huge chunk of very often used functionality gone when the newsgroups disappear.

I much prefer the newsgroups.  I find following threads in the web forum impossible.  I've used web forums on other sites, I still prefer newsgroups.

Well over 60 responses in this thread already - significantly more difficult than in newsgroups to get to those recently posted that I have not looked at yet .........

Forums are OK for very low volume groups, but not so well suited for this type of question and responses.....

DaveJ

See what happens with a zip file.

3201.Backup_Restore_XP_Vista.zip

Prefer: Newsgroups

Pros of Forums:

1. Mobility - I am often on the road using different computers. The forums will allow access from any computer. (This is possible with the newsgroups, but you end up downloaded all messages so it isn't a pracical possibility.)

2. Replies to email - It's nice that replies to my posts of interest are sent to my email

Cons of Forums:

1. Slow - My internet speed is fast, but the international internet connection from Asia slows down some sites and the Logos site always seems to be affected more than others. It takes about 15-30 seconds to load a page to read/write. This will greatly reduce my desire to check the forums.

2. Hard to view at a glance - It's hard to look at a glance and see what has happened since my last visit. This is partially due to my slow internet speed. I am used to scrolling through old topics and clicking on a select few (often from people I know tend to have meaningful comments). With the forums I need to open each separate topic.

3. Need to logon - Related to above. I need to logon and check the forum. The newsgroup I just clicked on the tab on thunderbird and it was there. I could check in seconds.

4. Replies to email - While the replies to posts being sent to email has its benefits, it could overwhelm my inbox, as where the newsgroup had it available and self contained. (I will likely set up an email filter to send it to a folder to put the forum emails together and remove this Con.)

Overall:

I will likely only come to the forums if I have a specific question/problem. By comparison, I looked at the newsgroups almost daily. I do like that I will be able to use the newsgroups on the road, but will rarely do that since I don't often have time when I am traveling anyhow. Even if speed were not an issue, I would probably rarely use the forums since it isn't right there on Thunderbird.

JUST Testing / playing around / experimenting  [~]

I much prefer the tree/thread format in the Newsgroups ... it makes following the various bunny trails easier,  but this is workable.   I certainly wouldn't want to have a meltdown over it and then have to be brought under control ...

0284.How to Handle Complainers.wmv

Sound clips, too ....

8132.Popeye laugh.wav

[;)]

Bob, have you heard of Google wave?  I think this will be better than NG and forums.  Here are a couple of links: http://wave.google.com/ and http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html.

I believe it address all of the issues that people have mentioned here in this forum and in the newsgroups.

I had really given up on the newsgroups, to me, it was a pain and outdated.   I am a active member of other forums, and I think it will be much easier to be active here now also. 

i am glad to switch to the web forum and very happy it is tied in with my existing account so I don't have to have another pw and user name![:)]

I prefer the web forum.  Hope all is well with you Bob.  Say "Hi" to the family for me!

Chris Cannatella

Known in China As:

康安华     教授

Kang An Hua   Jiao Shou

Prefer forums

Please change your style sheet(s) such that visited links are a different color than unvisited links. In fact, it would be nice if you changed the link colors on hover as well (to help minimize finger errors).

Yes, I prefer Web Forum to NNTP newsgroups.  Much better.  But I believe the forum need to be organized, searchable and sortable

I'm interested in your feedback on our new web forums.

Do you prefer this to the NNTP newsgroups? Are there advantages/disadvantages?

I think it's broken again.  It no longer goes to the most recent post.

I like it myself. But I never got into the newsgroups as much as some other Logos users. I hated it when the Southwest Conference bit the dust. But now--go Big XII!

I'm interested in your feedback on our new web forums.

My comment?  It's about time.  I've been using forums for years and prefer them over usenet style newsgroups.  For one thing, if I post a question/comment here, I have an option to receive an e-mail notice when there's a response to my post.  That saves tons of my time.

As a sign of the times, AT&T just informed me that as of mid-July they are dropping their support of usenet newsgroups.  Ah well.....

Gerry

I think having it web based is probably the way to go. Seems like there were just periodic problems getting on the news group servers and at times, it seems like the server is down. I also like the ability to access from anywhere. I'm guessing I might make use of it more, as currently I have to use Windows mail, as Outlook doesn't have a news reader, so I'm not always likely to remember to open it. I do however spend a lot of time in by browser. That's my two cents...

I prefer the forum instead of the newgroups which came to me through outlook. I was never sure if outlook had competely downlaoaded all of the posts. Thank you Logos, once again, for making my life easier.[:D]

I'm interested in your feedback on our new web forums.

Do you prefer this to the NNTP newsgroups? Are there advantages/disadvantages?

I just started using the Forum yesterday. Most of the time I cant tell who is reply to what message. Never had that problem with NNTP. 

What is the button "Select Tags..." for?

I like the forums because I can access them from a browser on any computer (I can't use newsgroups while at work).

Will use them much more. I was an advocate of newsgroups for years, feeling techno-superiority over those who only knew how to open a browser. But today, a Web forum is a no-brainer. So much more can be done than five or six years ago. RSS, linked video--whatever. I checked in occasionally on two or three of the newsgroups, but I'm more likely to be a regular on a Web forum.

I really like it. Very good move forward. Thanks

I'm interested in your feedback on our new web forums.

Do you prefer this to the NNTP newsgroups? Are there advantages/disadvantages?

I've been trying to be fair, but this format is just too clunky to be useful. It's impossible to follow a conversation, navigation is time consuming (especially when compared to newsgroups), and there still isn't a help file for many of the 'features.'

I realize that you'll need to go the way of web forums, but this forum software just isn't up to Logos standards of excellence and ease of use (IMHO). How about a different forum software? Many have been suggested. I don't like forums but I've been on forums that seem to work better than this.

Prefer newsgroups

• Much easier to navigate
• Less space
• Faster
• Easier to follow threads

A thread view option in the fourm would be greatly appreciated - Creative cow forums provide a thread view that was similar to the newsgroup.

Thanks for everything you do - great program and looking forward to the days ahead.