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Re: st: re: a wish list for Statalist
I also agree with Roy's second point. Forums are much easier in
maintaining congruent threads. One of my biggest pet peeves about
statalist is how it appends st: at the beginning of subject headings. So
the first message will have the heading
st: subject
Replies will then sometimes have
re: st: subject
st: re: subject
re: st: re: subject
and so on, which then makes aggregating by subject difficult (nevermind
when someone makes a change to the subject heading). The problem is the
way different mailers handle replies. In a forum, then can all be in the
same thread, and an administrator can even condense threads.
Keeping spam off of forums is not really much of a problem; keep posting
privileges to registered users, and that will drastically cut the spam
down. I participate in a number of boards that use the Invision Power
Board, and I almost never see spam. (Plus you can collect the IP
addresses of people who post spam and block them out pretty quickly.)
One that I go to frequently
(http://www.planetamd64.com/index.php?act=idx) has over 100,000 members
and about 12 major areas and dozens of subfields. Preferences can be set
so that if someone adds a posting in a specific area I can receive an
e-mail to look at it. For those with limited internet connections,
Invision supports a "lo-fi" version which is the same forum without the
graphics.
A wiki addition also could be quite appealing to complement the
documentation.
Joe McCrary
David Elliott wrote:
I have to echo Roy's sentiments a bit. Having set up and maintained a
couple of online forums I am aware of both the up and downsides of the
technology. Most forum applications can re-issue forum posts as
eMails, either individually or in digest form. Where forums excel is
in maintaining congruent threads. We often have threading problems
with Statalist depending on the mailers that subscribers use and how
they handle referencing to previous mails. Other benefits include the
ability to include code, screenshots, diagrams, etc. as attachments.
There are downsides, of course. It is hard to keep spam off forums as
spambots get increasingly sophisticated. (Want V1@gr@, anyone?)
Forums generally require quite a bit more backend maintenance than
mailing lists, although that does not require someone with content
expertise in Stata. The *best* solution to my mind would be a
combination forum and Wiki where certain subject threads get condensed
and transferred to the semi-permanent Wiki, a continually expanding
body of knowledge that is often more easily searched and scanned than
mailing list archives.
Speaking of Wikis, I have seen the combination of mailing list and
Wiki provide a very good resource as well. One example would be the
web design resource "CSS-discuss" [ http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ ]
These are, of course, just musings and many folk find the current
format to be suitable for their needs. However, with a new year come
new ideas and it wouldn't hurt to step back and reflect on whether
this resource could be made better for plebes and pundits alike.
DCE
---
David C. Elliott, MD, MSc
Medical Advisor, Epidemiologist
Nova Scotia Department of Health, Halifax, CAN
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
