Jim, thank you for your lengthy reply. You made very good points.

I participated in about a dozen of discussion groups. The Vanagon
list is the only one in list platform. I received about 100 list
emails daily on the average. If all the discussion groups were
like Vanagon list I would receive 1200 emails daily. This clearly
tells why I prefer a web based forum.

But I agree that for people who do not have high speed internet
connection the list will serve them better. However, I doubt they
could participate in many lists. I used dialup connection for years.
I don't think I could handle 100 emails daily at dialup speed.
Just imagine to go on vacation for a week and come back to face
a thousand emails in your mailbox and you are on a dialup connection.

Almost every time the photos or links in older messages in the
archive are no longer there or valid. A web based forum is better in
solving this problem by providing storage for photos.

You made an excellent point that if you ask the list a question
it reaches all list members instantly. Web based forums can not
do that at all.

Let me clarify. I am not asking to change the list platform.
I posted an opinion and it was meant to be exactly an opinion.

David

--- Jim Arnott <jrasite@EONI.COM> wrote:

> Thoughts (as a listmember, not as admin):
>
> Modern web-based forum probably is "better" for some users. But as
> Gary Bawden said in the post just prior to yours, " Many of us who
> live out in the boonies find dealing with websites to be a PITA (slow
> speeds, etc.)"  Not everyone lives where broadband is available. Hook
> up you dial up modem and go to www.yahoo.com. See how long it take to
> load.... Fer instance, at work I connect to an OC12. At home I
> connect to a .75 Mbps WISP. Many folks in my area have no choice but
> 53 k dial-up. If I have to do extensive web work, I do it at work.
> BIG difference between 740 k down and 42,000 k down. Email works fine
> on dial-up. Especially text only e-mail. As someone else mentioned
> today, the mean message size is less than 5 k.
>
> In fourteen years, I've not experienced your reported difficulty in
> responding to posts. I send a question and within seconds it is in
> 900 folks mailboxes. I usually have to wait about ten minutes before
> I start getting responses.  My life isn't in such a rush that waiting
> ten minutes is going to seriously impact any project I may have
> going. Furthermore, I'd prefer a 'considered' response. As an aside,
> I also have gmail and yahoo mailboxes. In both cases I get just
> exactly the performance I pay for. My 'real' mailbox (this one)
> receives list posts in seconds. Gmail in minutes and yahoo in hours
> if at all. The absolute worst is/was hotmail.
>
> Photos? You've not heard of Flickr? Picasa? Shutterfly? A Google of
> "free image hosting" yields over 13 million hits. Personally, I use
> Picasa. You could even use the 'spare' list's photo section on
> Yahoogroups. Why should vanagon.com burn up HDD space and bandwidth
> hosting images when there are so many other alternatives? Sending a
> link is easy.
>
> Searches: Agreed that gerry gets swamped searching 14 years of posts.
> Probably 200/day times 14 years.  You do the math. New hardware will
> help, but searches will never be blazing fast. Not with a single box.
> I use the horsepower of the Google farms.  Enter <search string>
> site:gerry.vanagon.com into your Google toolbar.
>
> I am not 'resisting' any changes.  I just do not have a burning
> desire to change for change sake.  This list has had about the same
> number of members for over a decade. I've seen fewer than twenty
> listmembars clamor to change the format.  Setting up a forum might
> very well be easy.  It seems to be your preference. Why don't you do
> it? This list has spawned numerous other technical discussion groups.
> Type2, Vintagebus (now almost all on TheSamba), California Camping
> Crazies, WetWesties, the various conversion and speciality lists,
> etc, etc, etc. Start your forum let us know about it and see where it
> goes.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Jim
>
>
> On Aug 27, 2008, at 9:30 AM, David Kao wrote:
>
> > Making change will always get resistance, including from myself.
> > But a modern forum no doubt is far better than the old list platform.
> > Yahoo, Gmail and probably most other mail programs are all web based.
> > So a web based forum is not going to be any slower, if the graphic
> > content and java scripts are kept at a minimum.
> >
> > Setting up a modern forum is not difficult. They are free from many
> > web hosting sites. But cost of web hosting could grow out of control
> > if traffic out of the forum site grows out of control.
> >
> > With the current list platform it is impossible to respond to posts
> > interactively. Yahoo very often delays list emails until the next
> > morning. It is very difficult to search the archive. There is no
> > storage for photos. Many of the discussion are taken offline so
> > a lot of discussions are started on the list but get offline and
> > gone afterwards.
> >
> > Why resisting the change?
> >
> > David
>