From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2006-09-02T06:49:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Off topic: What is "top posting" ??

On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 12:45:09AM +0900, Jeff Pritchard wrote:
> 
> The real question is why isn't either the web version or the email 
> version clearly superior to everyone?  The two are quite different 
> delivery systems, and yet there is no clear winner over time.  We 
> continue to have VHS and Betamax for eternity.  That's what strikes me 
> as odd.

Even if I liked the web interface more (which I don't), I still wouldn't
use it.  One of the major problem with it for me is the fact that it's
yet another place I have to go to keep up with things.  Email works
excellently for me because it allows me to aggregate communications I
wish to follow in one single place.  An RSS-to-email service for
weblogs, mailing lists, and newsletters to inform me of new material in
specific venues all add up to the ability to keep my informational life
managed through a single interface: my mail user agent.

If I used a web forum for all my mailing list activity, I'd have to
visit a half-dozen forums several times a day to keep up -- especially
since a forum doesn't inform me that it has received new material the
way email does.  When a forum does inform me of new material, it does so
by email.

As such, I just use email.

Some people don't have this requirement, so they prefer to use the web
forum instead.  More power to 'em.  I just hope they realize they aren't
the only people in the world involved in the discussion, and accomodate
those of us on the mailing list appropriately.

Besides, I find mutt (my mail user agent) lets me sift through and
respond to messages a heck of a lot faster than Firefox (my browser)
would.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);