Re: do we need a forum

["Jon Southwood" <jsouthwood@gmail.com>]

Make that another vote for Gmail. I use Gmail for all the lists that I (mostly) lurk on. The filters tag messages for me and in some cases automatically mark as read and archive for me (for the one list that I subscribe to purely for a reference archive, not necessarily for the conversation). The search functionality is great.

Also, for those who don't want to switch to Gmail but still want the search abilities: try using Google to search the LD archives. Some people aren't aware that you can refine a Google search to a specific website by adding "site:" followed by the site name. For example, if you wanted to search the LD archives for discussions about switching to a forum, you could go to Google, and type "forum site:
loopers-delight.com" into the search field. You get 151 links, almost instantaneously. Of course, if you refine it with the "intitle:" function, you can narrow it down even further. ("forum intitle: forum site:
loopers-delight.com" gets us down to 40 messages.)

Personally, I prefer the info coming to me. I'm a member of a few forums, but hardly ever remember to go check them out. And when I do, I generally get frustrated by the segregation of the messages into different categories. I prefer having all the messages in one place and ignoring the few that I might not care about than having to drill down into multiple subject sections just to find out if there's a new message or thread.

Cheers,
Jon Southwood

On 6/2/07, Doug Wellington <dougwellington@gmail.com> wrote:

> For what it's worth - I've found that Gmail is indispensable for groups like
> LD.

Being a member of "Dougs for Gmail" I have to agree!  ;-)