On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 1:45 AM, Ivan Shmakov
<ivan@gray.siamics.net> wrote:
>>>>> 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.
[…]
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