I was looking for a reference for something and found this.
Just thinking it is a bit ironic - or is it deja vu ?
nothing personal Walter and co.
http://www.freewayforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16
particularly post number nine - from Zenden
dust off the key to the padlock James 
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On Oct 27, 2007, at 3:13 PM, diarbyrag wrote:
I was looking for a reference for something and found this.
Just thinking it is a bit ironic - or is it deja vu ?
nothing personal Walter and co.
http://www.freewayforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16
particularly post number nine - from Zenden
dust off the key to the padlock James
That is funny. The whole reason that either forum came into
existence was because the previous mail server was running under Mac
OS 8 on a Performa 4400. Seriously.
And the pain everybody felt, particularly those on the west coast of
the US (or other points on the globe well past Greenwich), had to do
with the fact that the moderation was done only during UK business
hours, so it would be days between question and answer in many
cases. I remember it well, I have been subscribed to this list since
1997.
The new system, while backed by a mailing list rather than a
traditional forum software, is running on a powerful Linux server
somewhere, and the moderation is entirely automatic. Posts arrive
almost immediately after being made, whether thatās through the Web
form or an e-mail client.
If you seriously feel that there are substantial differences between
FreewayTalk and the Freeway Forum, please point them out to me.
Because I am having a hard time figuring out what the big deal is.
Thanks for posting this ā itās a great counter-example to all the
noise thatās been raised.
Walter
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Why not wait a while and see how it all pans out before reacting?
Thereās nothing stopping anyone setting up an unofficial Freeway user egroup
or forum BUT this could divide and dilute the resources of help that we all
share here.
Its clear that some prefer email access and others prefer web access -
perhaps via RSS.
If it really became apparent that this solution is not able to deliver as a
web based forum - then might be a time to consider options - but that time
is not here - in my humble opinion.
all the best
Brian
diarbyrag said recently:
I was looking for a reference for something and found this.
Just thinking it is a bit ironic - or is it deja vu ?
nothing personal Walter and co.
http://www.freewayforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16
particularly post number nine - from Zenden
dust off the key to the padlock James
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On 27 Oct. 2007, 5:54 pm, Bin-Ra wrote:
Why not wait a while and see how it all pans out before reacting?
well this is a good case in point I have just spent 15 minutes typing a thoughtfull reply to this thread. I pressed send and NOTHING ! the whole thing was gone. so much for new technology ! I will go to bed now and repost it tomorrow- I will select and copy all my posts to textedit from now on - Just in case. including this one.
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Couldnāt sleep so I rewrote my post, UK clocks go back in 15 mins so I will get my beauty sleep back
Well I will try and repost my response to this thread which was cut off in its prime for some reason.
Hello Walter, Bin-Ra and Co. Before I go off on a tangent I do want to stress that I appreciate all the hard work that goes into this endeavour, I just wanted to get this off my chest !
I am not trying to cause a breakaway forum, I just think that it has taken a totally different direction in the past three days and that it is not to everyones liking so far.
Personally I liked the way that the forum worked. ( must be something to do with the fact that I have been a photographer for 39 years and my brain seems to like the visual part of a forum. )
The email thing to me just seems to be quote upon subquote and I find it hard to follow.
I do think that it would be easier if the most recent posts were at the top, ie the whole thing worked in reverse order, That way you would not have to scroll down the whole page despite the links on the home page.
( I did like the idea from chuckamuck about colouring new replies )
A forum is by itās very nature a place where people can express their views freely, & hopefully without recrimination.
where the benefit to the whole outweighs the benefit to the few.
the changes here so far appear to have been made to satisfy those who enjoy the email aspect of the previous forum and without figures to back it up I have assumed they are the minority.
I always thought the personal avatars gave some personality & character, few minor details about the person ( yes if they filled it in ). and you could even contact someone via a private email. I felt that I knew everybody without meeting them.
No disrespect to Walter ( for whom I have the greatest regard ) it is at the moment a bit of a dull viewing experience, line after line of text, little green quote line, little grey quote line, not even a smile in sight.
Now forum technology aside, it was a place where newcomers to Freeway could ask questions and receive answers from the knowledgeable minority. A place where you could search for solutions, ask the most trivial of questions and get a sensible answer without feeling stupid, and be glad that you just purchased not only a great piece of software but membership to a select club. where each person had an identity. ( you could spot Big Erns in a football crowd just by his eyes ) If I were a newcomer to this list I would find it a bit less friendly than the forum was - despite the back end problems for the email and SPAM.
I just feel that it has been somewhat sterilised in the past few days and it needs to get that personal touch back if it is to be great.
Just a thought as always
Gary
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Thank you very much for doing this!
On Oct 27, 2007, at 9:47 PM, diarbyrag wrote:
Couldnāt sleep so I rewrote my post, UK clocks go back in 15 mins
so I will get my beauty sleep backPersonally I liked the way that the forum worked. ( must be
something to do with the fact that I have been a photographer for
39 years and my brain seems to like the visual part of a forum. )The email thing to me just seems to be quote upon subquote and I
find it hard to follow.I do think that it would be easier if the most recent posts were at
the top, ie the whole thing worked in reverse order, That way you
would not have to scroll down the whole page despite the links on
the home page.
I think that this could easily be an individual preference, something
you set on your preferences and then you can have one or the other as
you like. Personally, it strikes me as a problem waiting to happen.
Thereās an old joke Iāve seen in signature after signature, that goes
like this:
Because it upsets the normal order of conversation.
Why is top-posting frowned upon?
I laughed, anyway. (And yes, I do forget to bottom-post quite a lot,
so donāt take me for a real dyed-in-the-wool stickler.)
( I did like the idea from chuckamuck about colouring new replies )
Already implemented on the āsigned inā home page. Really really
simple and easy fix. Everywhere else is going to take a bit more
work. Itās do-able, but not as easy as it was on the home page.
A forum is by itās very nature a place where people can express
their views freely, & hopefully without recrimination.
As I never tire of saying, I have been on the FreewayTalk mailing
lists since 1997. I would never have stayed that long if the culture
and the people had been anything other than what you describe. There
is nothing that canāt be said on the list. And there are very very
few of the āflame warsā that you see on any of the other mailing
lists ā or even forums. Some of that civility might have been (in
the early days) down to good moderation, but I believe that the list
would have been mostly the same without moderation. With good
filtering in place (as we have) you never see the countless
āopportunities to enhance your manhoodā or whatnot ā thank goodness
they just die a quiet death somewhere out of sight. And I do feel
that there are genuine friendships, and certainly camaraderie to be
had here, regardless of underlying technology.
where the benefit to the whole outweighs the benefit to the few.
I could not agree more. Every time someone writes to me off-list to
ask a question, my first hint to them is to post it to the list. I
write, as does everyone who post answers on this list, to answer
questions that are asked by one, but understand that the answers then
become part of the collective understanding. Many many times I have
learned things by reading someone elseās answer to a question I
didnāt ask, or couldnāt put into words myself. āWhen the tide comes
in, all ships riseā, says the old saying. I believe sincerely that if
I give an answer today, someone else will answer my question tomorrow.
the changes here so far appear to have been made to satisfy those
who enjoy the email aspect of the previous forum and without
figures to back it up I have assumed they are the minority.
We do have figures. And they are illuminating. There are about 95
people who routinely correspond with the list by mail alone. And of
those 95, they are almost to a person the top posters of answers.
This is in no way to denigrate those who ask questions ā certainly
they are the more important in many ways, because very few people
have the discipline or even discernment to write the answer before
the question is asked! But do you see why the balance was set where
it is for version 1?
I always thought the personal avatars gave some personality &
character, few minor details about the person ( yes if they filled
it in ). and you could even contact someone via a private email. I
felt that I knew everybody without meeting them.No disrespect to Walter ( for whom I have the greatest regard ) it
is at the moment a bit of a dull viewing experience, line after
line of text, little green quote line, little grey quote line, not
even a smile in sight.
See, now this is the first time that anyone has mentioned specifics.
I appreciate you spelling it out. Avatars, smilies, more color, these
are real actual things that you want. That is good to know, and
illuminating.
Now forum technology aside, it was a place where newcomers to
Freeway could ask questions and receive answers from the
knowledgeable minority. A place where you could search for
solutions, ask the most trivial of questions and get a sensible
answer without feeling stupid, and be glad that you just purchased
not only a great piece of software but membership to a select club.
where each person had an identity. ( you could spot Big Erns in a
football crowd just by his eyes ) If I were a newcomer to this list
I would find it a bit less friendly than the forum was - despite
the back end problems for the email and SPAM.
Now just go back through what you wrote, substitute āmailing listā
for āforumā and you will have a pretty clear echo of what I wrote
above about the list, as well as how I feel about this community in
general. Itās one reason why I have worked so hard to build something
which could improve on the status quo in many many ways.
I just feel that it has been somewhat sterilised in the past few
days and it needs to get that personal touch back if it is to be
great.
Again, thanks for the specifics.
Just a thought as always
Gary
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Walter, I think I am becoming nocturnal !
3.29 am here ( including putting the clocks back one hour ) but thank you for a complete and understanding response to my reworked list !
and I will use the term āmailing listā from now on.
It is appreciated and I will sleep well now ( unless the baseball still keeps me awake ) still hoping the Rockies will give the Sox a game - despite beating your Phillies who beat my adopted Mets
Nice puppy in the photo btw
Keep up the good work
Night
Gary
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waltd -
although i am still a FW wannabee in many respects, i have been part of this community for a number of years. when Freeway talk first went to a forum, the difference was jarring but what i discovered was that instead of having my email box overflowing with digests i could never get around to reading, i could visit the forum and search to see if my problem had already been asked and answered. i could scan the subject lines and see interesting situations i possibly hadnāt considered or encountered. and, when i did post a question, i would get an email notifying me that someone had posted a reply.
this format is less useful for me. Iām not a poweruser; most of what is posted here is over my skill set. thatās why i donāt want to subscribe to the email form. BUT, that means i have to visit every few hours to see if anyone has tried to help with a question i posted. itās no longer easy to scan subject lines to learn something new or to discern if someone has posted a similar problem but phrased it differently than perhaps i knew to search for.
i understand you wanting to skew the ease of use to power posters but one of the reasons i have continued to steer people to FW is because of this online community. now, itās not very user friendly and that is a real loss for me.
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Dear Deirdre
(This posting only addresses the option of receiving emails of this list).
It is my conviction that email digests are a nightmare to read and discern
signal from noise and I strongly recommend not using that method - unless
you have some software that summarises and splits them - but then RSS feed
offers that anyway.
But individual emails are easy to route to specified inbox locations and can
be easily skimmed and threads and senders identified.
If your previous experience of Freewaytalk was digest based - then I
recommend at least seeing what it is like with single emails - because
digests are not - in my opinion - a user friendly option.
all the best
Brian
deidremc said recently:
that instead of having my email box overflowing with digests i could never
get around to reading,
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Sometime around 28/10/07 (at 10:50 +0100) Brian Steere said:
individual emails are easy to route to specified inbox locations and can
be easily skimmed and threads and senders identified.
I second this. It is worth taking a couple of minutes to set up a
mailbox for each Freewaytalk forum/list that you subscribe to by
email, then set up a rule or filter in your email client to move
incoming emails to the right locations.
I suggest setting a filter to catch everything where the āReply-To:ā
contains freewaytalk@ (thatās āfreewaytalkā and hte āatā symbol, in
case this gets stripped out).
This is far easier to read than digests, and it keeps everything
out of the way of your normal email. It also means youāll quickly
have a searchable archive of info that can be used offline as well as
on. Walterās web-based searching feature is excellent, but it is also
good to have your own collection of info handy.
k
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Sometime around 27/10/07 (at 22:56 -0400) Walter Lee Davis said:
Thereās an old joke Iāve seen in signature after signature, that goes
like this:Because it upsets the normal order of conversation.
Why is top-posting frowned upon?
I laughed too.
However, it isnāt quite the same in a multi-message web-based presentation.
I think it would benefit from either showing items in reverse order
(newest at the top) or having a scrolling-anchor trick to take
people to the newest post when they enter a thread.
k
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On 28 Oct 2007, at 03:54, deidremc wrote:
this format is less useful for me. Iām not a poweruser; most of
what is posted here is over my skill set. thatās why i donāt want
to subscribe to the email form. BUT, that means i have to visit
every few hours to see if anyone has tried to help with a question
i posted.
Just a thought, but: does this new forum not have the ānotify me by
email when someone replies to my postā feature? Of the few forums I
belong to, they all seem to do this and for me, it takes a bit of the
sting out of it being a forum, itās really useful.
ā
best wishes
Paul Bradforth
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On 28 Oct 2007, at 09:50, Brian Steere wrote:
If your previous experience of Freewaytalk was digest based - then I
recommend at least seeing what it is like with single emails - because
digests are not - in my opinion - a user friendly option.
Agree strongly. Iāve lost count of the times, in discussions like
these, where someone has said that they canāt use the email method
because they find it hard to deal with the enormous digests. In fact,
single emails are really easy to use: you can see them come in, you
can choose whether or not to look at them right there and then or
leave them until you have time. Itās ultimately flexible like that;
no need to visit a Web site, and your time is your own. Thatās always
been my view, anyway.
ā
best wishes
Paul Bradforth
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Exactly, I remember doing just this when I first started with Freeway 2 in 19??, so long ago I canāt remember exactly when. It was very useful as a beginner.
Hopefully Keith does not still have any of my 'āhow does this workā posts.
On 28 Oct 2007, at 10:01 am, Keith Martin wrote:
It also means youāll quickly
have a searchable archive of info that can be used offline as well as
on.
David Owen ::
Freeway Friendly Web Hosting and Domains
http://www.PrintlineAdvertising.co.uk/freeway
On Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:56:27 -0400, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
There are about 95
people who routinely correspond with the list by mail alone. And of
those 95, they are almost to a person the top posters of answers.
I must be one of the exceptions! I use the email option (individual
posts filtered into folders) almost exclusively and use the web forum
primarily as an archive for searching. The one web-based discussion
list I do use regularly is GuardianTalk and what I like about it is the
clean and simple interface - lots of white space, narrow text column,
no colour, no avatars and, above all, no smileys. The more bells and
whistles Walter adds in response to demand, the less I like the new
Freeway forum! However since Iām not going to be a regular user, Iāll
let him get on with it! (Or maybe there could be a with/without bloat
option in preferences.)
What I do miss, though, is the link in the email message to the forum
post.
Roger
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What I do miss, though, is the link in the email message to the forum
post.Roger
This would be trivial to add ā but only to messages sent by the Web forum. Anyone who posted from e-mail, particularly if they started a new thread, would not be able to add this sort of thing.
The reason for this is simple. The Web view is just another subscriber to the list. It gets all the mail at the same time that all the other mail subscribers get it. By that time itās too late to do anything to the mail message itself.
Walter
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Sometime around 28/10/07 (at 12:05 +0000) David Owen said:
Hopefully Keith does not still have any of my 'āhow does this workā posts.
Heheheā¦ I only trash spam, all other email is archived.
k
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Sometime around 28/10/07 (at 10:23 -0400) waltd said:
This would be trivial to add ā but only to messages sent by the Web
forum. Anyone who posted from e-mail, particularly if they started a
new thread, would not be able to add this sort of thing.
Hmm. But all email does go through the mailing list softwareā¦
Could the list software concoct a correct URL for the web thread by
looking at the message subject? Or at least one that the web scripts
could use to finish the job when sent the link? And then add this
somewhere in the message as it processes it?
For example, something like
http://www.freewaytalk.net/threadfinder.php?subject=Missing%20Message
for your āMissing Messageā thread, which could - with a fair wind and
some of your logic magic - be parsed to become
http://www.freewaytalk.net/thread/view/15268 when presented to the
Freewaytalk serverā¦
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Finlay, as usual, has a bright idea about this, utilizing the message-
id header from the mail message. Iāll let you know when itās in
there. Those, unlike subject headers, are globally unique.
Walter
On Oct 28, 2007, at 10:45 AM, Keith Martin wrote:
Sometime around 28/10/07 (at 10:23 -0400) waltd said:
This would be trivial to add ā but only to messages sent by the Web
forum. Anyone who posted from e-mail, particularly if they started a
new thread, would not be able to add this sort of thing.Hmm. But all email does go through the mailing list softwareā¦
Could the list software concoct a correct URL for the web thread by
looking at the message subject? Or at least one that the web scripts
could use to finish the job when sent the link? And then add this
somewhere in the message as it processes it?
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To keep a balance here regarding preferences, I agree with deidrmc in terms of having a friendly place to go search for information.
I seem to be of the opposite mind to the majority on this thread as I prefer not to be bothered by continuous email alerts. I would rather choose the time and place to receive information. A forum, or wiki, or even Google works best for me when I have a question about something that just requires a search to find information I need without having to store locally list after list after list in an email client.
Email is very useful for more or less instant communications, but I donāt rely on it for all purposes.
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