[K12OSN] Opinions on a Forum

[Dan Young]

Les Mikesell wrote:
>> Again, thanks, and I will see how I feel and how others way in at.
>> Hopefully if I do get a forum up I can put aside enough time to
>> contribute good topics and set it up with some useful initial
>> information.
> 
> Try joining a few dozen mailing lists and forums before you decide
> which you like better. Forums become very cumbersome when you have
> more than a couple of interests.

FWIW Les, I agree about forums not scaling and personally hate the idea
of anything that would balkanize F/OSS in education efforts. Speaking
just for myself, forums are out for that reason only.

Having said that, the typical geek interaction with mailing lists (e.g.
filtering on the List-Id header or similar) is _not_ very welcoming or
obvious to the newcomer. I suppose I could blame the poor mailing list
support in popular MUAs, but I can't help but wonder how many folks run
away screaming the first time their INBOXes fill up from joining a
high-traffic list (imagine (fedora|ubuntu)-users lists for example).

Maybe I'd like to see perhaps pointers to the GMANE interface, as that's
effectively a BB-type interface to most popular lists. Frankly, I like
that the conversations on K12OSN don't usually get too "meta" and mostly
focus on rocking with regard to free software in schools.

-- 
Dan Young <dyoung at mesd.k12.or.us>
Multnomah ESD - Technology Services
503-257-1562