[Coco] OS-9 Book

[Frank Pittel]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 01:47:07AM -0400, Lothan wrote:
> From: "Stephen H. Fischer" <SFischer1 at Mindspring.com>
> 
> >There are more reasons that the world is going to web based
> >forums, but then
> >those who also use them know why already.
> 
> There are also good reasons I dislike using web-based forums. Web
> forums can't track what I have read vs. what I have not read; at
> best, they record the last message I read or the last message that
> existed at the time I last logged on. Many web forums don't even
> track what I've read so it can be difficult keeping up with
> conversations in multiple threads.
> 
> Most web forums present flat threads so it can be difficult to track
> individual threads of thought and long threads can be scattered
> across 10 or more web pages, thereby making it even more difficult
> to keep up with the last posts in each thread.
> 
> There's also the issue of advertisements and ad tracking in web
> forums that you typically don't get in a mailing list or newsgroup.
> The one you mentioned for example is tracked by Google AdSense,
> Chikita, and Quantcast.

That's not always true. I host both a mailing list and web forum (SMF) for
a large format photography group I'm a memeber of. I set up the mailing list
first and it received a fair amount of traffic. A couple of years later I setup
a web forum and virtually all of the traffic from the mailing list moved to the
forum. The forum software I use will do a reasonable job of keeping track of the
posts that you have and haven't read. The threads are managed by creation in that
a member either starts a new topic or responds to an existing topic.

The forums I host don't have any ads or do any ad tracking.