[GNC] email seems so crude 30 years after MULTICS forums.

[Jim DeLaHunt]

On 2021-10-07 11:10, David G. Pickett via gnucash-user wrote:

> Can't GNUCash find an open source web app that does structured forums in place of email full on copied replies upon replies in a long, unstructured text string?  I the 90's I used a MULTICS app called forum that… [did all kinds of wonderful things]….
> There must be open source web apps out there to do this, in lieu of this email thing!  A daily reminder summary of new and replied topics would then suffice.

David:

I sympathise with your frustration. Just about every project I 
participate in needs to find a way to communicate. Nearly every project 
which tries email encounters the drawback you experience.

The MULTICS app "forum" sounds wonderful. However, next to its 
advantages, I'll bet it had a few drawbacks: 1. everyone had to connect 
to the same forum site to participate in the discussion, 2. someone had 
to be system administrator for the forum site, 3. the format might have 
worked well for you, but it did not work well for some other people.

Forums and email lists are two different approaches to meeting the same 
communications need. They have complementary strengths and weaknesses. 
Each approach works better for some people and worse for others. The 
corresponding advantages of an email list over a forum are: 1. the 
discussion comes to each person's email inbox, 2. it is less work to be 
system administrator for an email list than for a forum, 3. the format 
works well for some people who don't like the forum format.

That said, in the other projects I visit, the forum software called 
Discourse <https://www.discourse.org/> currently seems the best-designed 
option widely available. One of its strengths is that you can sort of 
interact with it via email threads if you want to.

I predict that we could have a big discussion about the pros and cons of 
email lists and forums, and we would end up without a resolution; we 
would discover that no one option works for everyone.

Best regards,
      —Jim DeLaHunt