Fwd: co-existence is possible

[Kai Staats]

This just in from Andrew ...

I suggest we (you) keep both the Mailing Lists and the Forum... The ML as the 
27/7/365 help desk and the forum as the YDL enthusiasts chit-chat place.

Its clear to me that the Mailing Lists are much more convenient and make it 
easy to reach lots of people at once then a forum do. They actually provide 
me with some interesting readings when I get back from work, and that, right 
on my face :). I often learn stuffs from these messages (like that the $PATH 
is sequential and should not be a long line). It does not require a 'login' 
every time the users want to reply. Navigating these forums is 
potential-useless-time-wasting pain the the @$$, if we look farther, when the 
forum will actually have tons of threads.. hmmm just like the ML archives, 
indeed...

As for the forum's sweet spots, the predominant advantage could be 
content/user control. From an admin P.O.V., it seam easier to block unwanted 
troublemakers out of the way and maintain some level of content quality. I 
witnessed a couple discussions being deviated from the original subject, 
leaving the original poster without a single tangible answer.

That make most of my points. ML as a help-desk, forum as a chatter. --Andrew