Date   : Mon, 31 Jan 2005 12:38:06 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: bbc forum

On Mon, 2005-01-31 at 19:35 +0800, Tom Drage wrote:
> I have considered for some time creating a bbc/acorn forum at my site. If I
> were to create it would anyone be interested in being a member? (just
> getting an idea so it doesn't flop if I put it up)

Tom,

My take on this:

If you can find a way of linking it to this mailing list, *and* make it
clear on the forum that people posting there are also posting to a
mailing list, then it could make a nice extra feature for your site.

Personal observation is that the majority of people prefer usenet and
mailing lists over web forums though - easier to get a handle on the
data that they're after with a minimum of clutter I suppose.

The danger if you create a self-contained forum is that it fragments the
community further; people generally like all of their information in one
place rather than being signed up to several different resources. That
means the community ends up missing out on valuable knowledge as a
whole. 

What might be nice is if your site held searchable up-to-date archives
of this list, with clear instructions on how to join the list; this is
something I was thinking of doing for my own site when I finally get
around to getting things off the ground (too many archives can't be a
bad thing I reckon)

cheers

Jules