Re: this list - on twitter - or other solutions?

[Doris Werder <dwerder -at- t-online -dot- de>]

Dear Tara,


I don't think using a web-based forum is an advantage in any way. The 
reverse is true in my opinion: Searching for information in a web forum 
can be a terrible waste of time. Either it takes you ages to find what 
you are looking for or you never find it at all. I collect all my 
mailing list postings in filtered folders. This way I have immediate 
access to all the topics that were discussed in the lists. No web-based 
solution can ever top this.

I think that these forums are just a temporary fashion that will 
disappear again because of their chaotic way of sorting the information. 
Have you ever searched for software help in a web forum? You enter a 
search word and get fifty results, most of them completely irrelevant 
postings. For each of them you wait for the page to load...

It gets worse when you don't know which search word to use. If I want to 
know what's there, I am stuck: FAQ sections and forums don’t have an 
organised table of contents, an index and all that stuff that makes a 
good documentation.

I think this is a challenge for software companies: organising the 
information from the forums and FAQ sections on their website in a way 
that gives users who want to solve a problem immediate access. 
Naturally, you need a human editor to do this. Most companies don't want 
to spend that money on their users.

But that's another topic...

As for Twitter, I haven't used it but as far as I know it's similar to 
ICQ: you see who is there. But do you really want to know? In terms of 
human communication over the web, I would prefer a fast and reliable 
video conferencing system so that you see and hear the people you 
interact with. When you have a problem, you could open a conference and 
invite other users to join the conference. The downside is that you 
don't have written recordings. For this reason, I doubt that such a 
system will completely replace the written form. Probably a combination 
of a mailing list (for registered users) and a video conferencing system 
would be the best solution.

My two Pfennigs


Doris Werder
State-certified translator and technical writer


Doris Werder Technical Writing and Translations
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dwerder -at- t-online -dot- de <mailto:dwerder -at- t-online -dot- de>

Tara Charter schrieb:

Is there a better way to lurk here? On Twitter, perhaps? Is techwr-l.com in need of a little technology upgrade? 


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