I would tend to agree with Greg Kovacs about the volume of e-mail traffic
certain topics are generating. It was suggested a while ago that a newsgroup or
WWW site which uses HyperNews be used as a forum, but since not everyone has
access, e-mail was the preferred method. The problem with e-mail is the one we
currently have with the amount of e-mail messages per day. Filtering and
reading them is tedious. Digesting the e-mail on a weekly basis is a possible
solution, but response times are then limited. The goal is to be able to
participate or generate a discussion as it is happening (rather than wait), but
be able to skip over it if it's not relevant. That's why I still believe a
newsgroup or WWW site running a forum (like HyperNews) is the best solution. I
am hoping that most everyone will have access to the World-Wide Web very soon
-- then this could be implemented rather easily -- and in many cases,
discussions can occur in realtime using existing chat programs on the WWW (as
an example, see http://www-mtl.mit.edu:8001/webchat/chat.html). Any suggestions
or comments are welcome.
- Joe Kung