Re: EGroups

From: Ian Cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 10:38:00 +0000 (GMT)


Admittedly I don't have any alternative proposals to the EGroups suggestion, however I do have a couple of concerns.
  1. The digest has a certain character to it, that is different from Egroups. I suspect that some of that comes from the fact that it is a digest. Postings tend to be longer. The fact that people can digest and reply overnight or even within two days and still be relevant, does not exlude people from contributing who would not have time to keep up with a debate on egroups. Look at the debates on the Hero Wars list. The turn around time is fairly rapid. The individual messages tend to be shorter. I know that my personal posting style differs from HeroWars to digest. HeroWars posts tend to be snapped off, quick thoughts, digest posts longer, and more thought about before I post. I would be worried that by loosing the 'digest' flavour we would loose the unique nature of the Gloranthan digest. I would worry we would loose contributors who did not want to keep up with an EGroups list.

2:) Increasing list confusion. Having two lists on the topic of Glorantha - the background, both on Egroups, might be confusing. How would people determine what was a Glorantha mail and what Hero Wars mail. Why not just put everything on the Hero Wars list? If your reply is - because Hero Wars is supposed to be a non-esoteric source of information, and the digest a forum for debate, then my repsonse would be - how would people know where to post to (cross-posting could become a nightmare) and if the forum for the Glorantha digest is supposed to be for debate isn't the digest a better format.

3: Tradition. Ok its not important to everyone, but part me would be saddened to see the digest end in its current subscrition format.

I have no idea how majordomo works. But I make a living as a software engineer so I guess I could figure it out, if no one else is willing to take up the baton.

But the question really is: Is the format of the digest important. I think so. What about you?

Ian



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