[H-GEN] Re: [H-DSIG] software runs the world

Jason Parker-Burlingham jasonp at panix.com
Fri Mar 18 22:26:34 EST 2005


On Fri, Mar 18, 2005 at 09:12:26PM -0500, Robert Brockway wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Mar 2005, Russell Stuart wrote:
> > BTW, it is my imagination, or is there a general movement
> > away from mailing lists such as this to blogs and rss feeds
> > as the vehicle for on-line discussion?

I think it's true, and in general I think it's pretty rotten.  Blogs
tend to make it very difficult to tell if someone has replied to your
reply; the general solution seems to be to sleep with one eye open,
watching your referrer logs, or to use blogging software the sends email
alerts when a comment is made.

I don't think I have ever seen a deeply nested discussion on a blog.

> The lists I'm on (30 mostly technical lists, give or take) are still very 
> busy.  Blogs would be more like news groups in application I think.

Not as much as you'd think.  What I do see is a very large number of
PHP-driven forums which reimplement USENET, and poorly; there's no
redistribution of content, no killfile mechanism, and it's impossible to
crosspost, so on and so forth.

It seems to me that web-based discussion forums have removed most of the
advantages of mailing lists and USENET without offering anything of true
value for the kinds of discussions that many people want to have.

jason, yeah, I have a blog.  I'm a complex individual.  Deal.




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