[Asterisk-Users] Are there online forums instead of this emailforum??

[Tim Bass]

The UNIX Forums have over 28 thousand registered users.     I have many
years of experience in both email lists and on line forums and I can tell
you without a doubt that on-line forums are far superior to email lists.
There is no comparison.  

This list, for example, has a one hour lag time between users who recently
joined (at the end of the SMTP queue) and posting a message!!   That is
completely dysfunctional, posting a message and waiting over an hour to see
it sent out to other!  This is one of the problems with serial email lists.
The lag time gets worse and worse for each new member of the community.

Plus, you cannot easily have 10 or more moderators on a busy email list
server.  However, in a modern on-line community, you can have many
moderators sharing the work and can moderate to keep all the profanity,
bullying, insults, etc. down to a zero and raise the level of discussion up
to facts and knowledge.

As the lead admin for the UNIX forums, I have watched how on-line
communities develop for many years.   You can't have a strong community when
posters use profanity, are impolite to others, etc.   Digium and Asterisk
are too important to be supported by a broken email list with a one hour lag
time between post and delivery, too big to moderate. .  A community serves
everyone, not just those who dominate with there intimating posts to others.


I just joined this list yesterday, have noticed a lot of profanity, bullying
and some really nonsense, inaccurate, highly opinionated posts.   This is
not good for the Asterisk community.    

Digium must fix this.  Others, putting up a forum, will not solve the
problem because the list will remain.    All that has to happen is for
Digium to endorse a forum (I recommend someone use vBulletin, but that is
just my opinion) and transition off this list to something that benefits the
community as a whole, and not just a few dominate individuals who like
email.