Re: PHYS-L Needs New Owner and New Home!!

[William Beaty <billb@eskimo.com>]

On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Herbert H. Gottlieb wrote:

> > My $.02 is to keep the current email format. Web based may have its
> > advocates, but I am pleased with my habit of having Eudora do a quick
> > download of ALL my (several) mailing lists and then settling down, 
> > offline, to peruse the collected wisdom.
>
> I fully agree with Chuck.  Using the free Juno e-mail, my phone is only
> tied up for
> a few seconds and all reading and writing messages is done off line.

The SAS (Soc. Am. Science) switched from email list to WWW, and the
traffic plummeted.  I suspect that people find it hard to avoid daily
email.  The same people might check a WWW forum only every few days (or
less often.) If message traffic gets too sparce, there will be fewer
replies, which leads to catastrophic traffic decrease.  Threaded display
is convenient, but users then need not read all messages, and are therefor
less tempted to respond.  And if most people check the forum every few
days, then back and forth conversations become impossible.  The forum
undergoes a solid/gas phase change!

WWW forums (fora?) are a good way to organize a high-traffic group.  But
for phys-L, it would be like taking the population of a small town and
moving it into an empty city.  Individuals would never encounter each
other anymore.


((((((((((((((((((((( ( (  (   (    (O)    )   )  ) ) )))))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty                                  SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb@eskimo.com                                  www.eskimo.com/~billb
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits          science projects, tesla, weird science
Seattle, WA   206-781-3320          freenrg-L taoshum-L vortex-L webhead-L