Digital BW, The Print

I believe there are many advantages to the forum format, and that is 
why it is so popular. But it certainly won't do everything for 
everyone. For example, it will not create a digest and send email of 
every post made during the day, and some folks really do like that 
feature. It will, however, notify you of new postings to specific 
threads you may be intersted in, as it allows you to "subscribe" to 
threads of interest. Some folks think that is a better approach, 
other don't like it.

And, this Yahoo board offers little, if any, search facility, while 
the forum unquestionably offers extensive search capabilities. 
Getting all the archives into it is another story, but I am pretty 
sure they can be compiled and reformatted, then placed into the 
forum database without too much difficulty. I suspect that an adept 
database programmer will be required to perform this task initially 
(should not be very difficult for us to locate).

In Yahoo's favor, I have found Yahoo to be seriously reliable, and 
don't really mind the interstitial ads, as they are simply the price 
of admission. But finding information here (which I believe to be 
the thrust of this endeavor), and having to pore over every single 
post is tedious at best, especially now, with the "new" format 
(doesn't anyone at yahoo think they should ever ask their users what 
they prefer for their forums??).

The issue of having to scan each post before finding out what is 
useful is not at all solved by the Yahoo format. At the very 
least, commercial forum software lets you separate threads by their 
titles and - as the forum grows - by as many sub-categories as you 
like. And, in a well-administered forum, miscategorized threads will 
be quickly moved by its administrators to more appropriate 
locations, whenever necessary. This feature alone make the forum 
format a supremely well-organized source of information.

Yahoo is just one big mess of a list. So, in a commercial forum, if 
you are only looking for information about using eboni on your 2200, 
there would be little reason to find and open the thread 
entitled "roll paper," located under the "Paper" category. You would 
more likely look under a category called "Third Party Inks," or you 
could simply perform a search on eboni, 2200 or both.

Beats having to read the title of every single thread in the 
database...

Jeff


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Diane Fields" 
<picnic@c...> wrote:
> Bob,
> 
> I had not thought of that--I agree--I read several forums, but 
never all the threads by a long shot and email is much more 
convenient for this group for myself.  I think the main thing that 
is difiicult with the yahoogroups is a searchable database.  I have 
unsubbed and resubbed over a period of time and always try to search 
for some particular things when I resub--and find it very difficult.
> 
> Diane
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Bob Frost 
>   To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com 
>   Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 2:29 PM
>   Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Will this forum ever get streamlined?
> 
> 
>   Stephen,
> 
>   Personally I hate forums! You never know what might be useful 
info until you 
>   scan the post <snip>