Alexey Eromenko <al4321@gmail.com> writes:
Well, I may be risking to spark a flame war, but I'm deeply concerned with the proliferation of Web-based discussions software, and would like to share my concerns in the hope that it'd allow those intending to deploy a discussion platform to make a more weighted decision regarding the particular technology the platform is to be based upon.
OpenDisc has no user forum (PHPbb). It is necessary. Without it it is impossible to form a community. Open-Source isn't worth much without community. Qumble has a forum.
It's my opinion that Web forums divide more than then unite. In my experience, a typical Web forum has one or more of the following issues: • no support for any “single identity, multiple services” technology, such as OpenID or X.509 certificates whatsoever, thus forcing the user to learn one more (login, password) pair for no good reason; it quickly becomes a problem if the user is interested in discussions in more than a few forums; • over-specialization and lack of cross-posting (or easy multi-posting); there may be a forum for each of, say, Postfix, Exim, Courier, and Sendmail; now, let's imagine that user wants to choose an MTA for his or her own needs, and seeks for opinions regarding all of the four; wouldn't it become necessary to post the message to all these forums? and it isn't nearly as easy with a typical Web forum as it is with a mailing list or a Usenet newsgroup; • maintenance costs; while a Web forum requires considerable maintenance (including paying bills to the hardware and connectivity provider or providers), a Usenet newsgroup has virtually none; • single point of failure; the current network of news servers (which do indeed require maintenance, but that's a bit different) provides redundancy, and Google Groups provide archival; mailing list messages, once they are delivered to one's mailbox, are also independent of the list server, and may be archived by the user for his or her own convenience; • multiple points of access; while a subscription to a mailing list or a newsgroup gives the user a powerful point of access (namely, his or her Mail and News User Agent, possibly combined with an Atom and RSS reader), it's necessary to switch between different Web sites (and thus their respective software) to post to different forums, and if the forum in question lacks an Atom or RSS feed, even to read them! • deprivation of the user's freedom to choose the software to use; while the user may, obviously, choose whatever Web browser to use, a significant portion of a Web forum implementation resides on the Web server, over which the user has no control; if the administrators decide to use phpBB, the user has no way of using the forum without using phpBB; on the contrary, if, say, the preference of the newsgroup's creator (or the mailing list administrator) is Gnus, the user is still free to use SLRN if he or she so decides; • reliance on ECMAScript is not untypical; given that Lynx and similar browsers lack ECMAScript, this may or may not have some accessibility implications; on the contrary, there're many character cell terminal-based (or “text-only”) News and Mail User Agents, which, I believe, are typically compatible with screen reading software. […] -- FSF associate member #7257 Coming soon: Software Freedom Day http://mail.sf-day.org/lists/listinfo/ planning-ru (ru), sfd-discuss (en)