[time-nuts] Bulletin Board / Forum

J. Forster jfor at quik.com
Wed Aug 25 14:47:55 UTC 2010


Hi Jim,

Yes, it would be a lot of work to write Wiki style articles on all list
topics.

Another option would be an archive of all Group posts, searchable via
Google. There is apparently a Google app that does that. I've seen options
on web pages where there is a Google search button, that has options of:

( ) Search the site
( ) Search the web

This should be pretty easy to implement and far less effort than a full Wiki.

FWIW,

-John

================


> J. Forster wrote:
>> If your objective is to make a Wiki for Time-Nuts topics, why not do
>> just
>> that. There are Wiki Builder packages out there and IMO an easily
>> searchable archive of Group posts would be "a good thing".
>>
>> It's unclear to me how many will have time to read both emails and a
>> forum. I certainly don't.
>>
>
> It would be a "benefit to society" if someone were to take all the posts
> on various schemes and circuits and edit them into a document/wiki/FAQ..
> however, having done that in other circumstances, I know that it is a
> HUGE task, and one that is continuing.
>
> I've been involved in several mailing lists over the years (and years)
> and some (like this) have a fairly high signal to noise ratio.  ALL of
> them occasionally have noise bursts (for lack of a better term).. often
> when the list traffic is otherwise slow and/or people are busy doing
> something they're not yet ready to talk about or need to have questions
> answered.  to paraphrase mailing lists abhor a vacuum, and rather than
> "is the list still alive" posts, technically oriented lists wind up with
> a certain amount of topic drift, but it's temporary, and as soon as some
> thing interesting in the real core area pops up, it snaps back into line
> (often aided by the skilled hand of a moderator)
>
> I am aware of one successful "fork" and that's from the Tesla Coil
> Mailing List (TCML) at http://www.pupman.com, which spawned a 4hv forum,
> because the TCML tries to stay Tesla coil focused, but there is a lot of
> interest in non Tesla Coil HV stuff.  A lot of overlap between members,
> and both are active, and both are also high SNR.
>
> Sometimes, too, there are personality clashes or people get cranked up
> about some issue, but those inevitably die down (or the gentle hand of
> moderation puts out the flames) because, under it all, the people on the
> list are there because the care about the subject, and caring about the
> subject means strong feelings, but also (eventual)tolerance of others
> (again, moderators can do wonders)..
>
>
> I am aware of several unsuccessful forks (or of limited success,
> anyway)... where there was an attempt to split out the "newbie
> questions" from the "old hands"... the problem is that the old hands
> want to talk old hand stuff, but are also the folks best suited to
> answering the newbie questions, so the reading/responding traffic hasn't
> really changed.  And how do you get to be an old hand without starting
> as a newbie?  There are also manufacturer sponsored lists where
> marketing or product support is important, and there's a desire to keep
> the speculative bug finding and philosophical design discussions from
> distracting new customers. Flex-radio/flexedge lists are in this bucket,
> but I don't know how well it works. There's lots of other factors at
> play in that particular list/forum arena.   (And, of course, the biggies
> like Apple, Dell, HP, etc, are notorious for removing posts that are
> uncomfortable)
>
>
> Personally, I like email lists, because I am an old codger at the age of
> 50 and prefer a gentle "push" rather than having to "pull" from a forum.
>   It's like reading the morning newspaper (which I did just before
> writing this!)  The only time it's a pain is when I'm on travel for an
> extended period of time, because it's worse going through hundreds of
> emails (from all sources) at a crack than seeing them all nicely laid
> out.  I could, I suppose, set up some rules/folders, but that leads to
> "folders of unread list posts", and I'd rather read/delete/read/delete
>
>





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