Move this to Meta.A mailing list is terrible, I wouldn't want all the messages in my mailbox any day. You might want to check out the NNTP idea though...
Everyone has there own preferences though and I personally prefer forums.
Topic: Forum criticisms, wish list - page 2. (Read 4662 times)
Yeah, it's a mess also because of people not posting topics in the forums they should be in Move this to Meta.
A mailing list is terrible, I wouldn't want all the messages in my mailbox any day. You might want to check out the NNTP idea though...
Everyone has there own preferences though and I personally prefer forums.
Move this to Meta.A mailing list is terrible, I wouldn't want all the messages in my mailbox any day. You might want to check out the NNTP idea though...
Everyone has there own preferences though and I personally prefer forums.
Just admit , you are not used to fast moving forums 
I admit I am not a student with hours and hours to spend on the forums
And neither will be many of the new users and merchants we want to bring to bitcoin.
Just admit , you are not used to fast moving forums
Everybody has their own preferences, when it comes to online communication, but a few things are becoming clear as time goes on. Bitcoin is getting a lot of press attention and new users, and the forums are really creaking under the weight.
Unless you're a student with tons of time on your hands, it is difficult to scan through the unsorted list that "Show unread posts..." link presents. 24 hours of forum traffic produces a time-sorted, cluttered list of random topics in random order. At a minimum, they should be sorted by forum, then last-post time, rather than simply a global sort of all threads by time. (Usenet news readers have been doing this for decades)
Paging through 24 hours worth of unread posts also leads to paging errors -- half of page #2 appears on page #3 -- because the forum is so active, it sometimes generates unread posts faster than you can page through the unread-post list! Smart database apps can handle pagination better than this mess.
Inside a thread itself, there needs to be some way to up-vote useful posts, and down-vote annoying people and posts. If Gavin posts something to a thread, it should be easier to find that, even when 100 newbie trolls or sock puppets jump into a thread. 4chan-like image posts, in particular, take up a ton of screen real estate versus the informative value, and there should be some way to filter out that noise.
Heck, even plain-ole-email mailing lists have properly threaded replies, rather than just a long, scrolling list.
At bitcoin becomes more and more popular, these issues will increase over time. (this is why this post is in 'Bitcoin discussion' and not 'Meta')
Unless you're a student with tons of time on your hands, it is difficult to scan through the unsorted list that "Show unread posts..." link presents. 24 hours of forum traffic produces a time-sorted, cluttered list of random topics in random order. At a minimum, they should be sorted by forum, then last-post time, rather than simply a global sort of all threads by time. (Usenet news readers have been doing this for decades)
Paging through 24 hours worth of unread posts also leads to paging errors -- half of page #2 appears on page #3 -- because the forum is so active, it sometimes generates unread posts faster than you can page through the unread-post list! Smart database apps can handle pagination better than this mess.
Inside a thread itself, there needs to be some way to up-vote useful posts, and down-vote annoying people and posts. If Gavin posts something to a thread, it should be easier to find that, even when 100 newbie trolls or sock puppets jump into a thread. 4chan-like image posts, in particular, take up a ton of screen real estate versus the informative value, and there should be some way to filter out that noise.
Heck, even plain-ole-email mailing lists have properly threaded replies, rather than just a long, scrolling list.
At bitcoin becomes more and more popular, these issues will increase over time. (this is why this post is in 'Bitcoin discussion' and not 'Meta')
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