The Cunctator wrote:
> Hmm...when did I recommend that Wikipedia use a BBS?
>
> How's that going, Jimbo?
It's being ignored for absolutely no good reason.
What BBS software are the Japanese using? Where is it
hosted? Is it
something that we could/should host for them, and also set up for
English-speakers?
I love using email, and so that's one of the main
reasons I haven't
gotten off my butt to look into this. But that's not a very good
reason.
It is a very good reason. The Japanese may do whatever the want, but I
strongly advise against using a BBS for Wikipedia discussions.
1) Mailing lists are, by their very nature, decentralized. Any post is
replicated on hundreds of machines. This automatic replication makes
censorship very hard and a total loss of data unlikely.
2) Archives like the ones generated by Mailman can be imported into email
clients and searched locally at high speed. I have frequently made use of
that feature to build high quality archives. The search function of most
BBS systems, on the other hand, is far from optimal (I've seen many BBS
which claimed to have a search, but where this search never worked).
3) Mailing lists keep a track record. It is easy and fast to see all posts
by a particular member, or everything written by yourself. With a BBS, you
first have to figure out if such a feature exists, then wait for the
server to perform some search. Server is down? Too bad, you'll never get
that post you wrote 3 months ago now.
4) Mailing lists allow everyone to participate without a free online
connection. In many developing nations, Internet access is paid by the
minute, and reading and replying to posts online costs money. Mailing
lists can be conveniently read, responded to and archived offline.
5) Mailing lists allow the use of a variety of email clients which all
have advantages and disadvantages. Everyone can use the software of their
choice, with a user interface that suits them, without being forced to
make use of an arbitrary web interface. This is of importance to
handicapped users, for whom special email clients exist.
6) Good email clients make quoting and threading transparent and easy to
use. They interpret the reference ID in a message and thereby allow you to
quickly navigate to the parent post that a message has responded to.
Quoting and writing within a real text editor is also a lot more
convenient than writing within a browser window.
7) Bulletin board systems are slow. This is related to 4) -- in a BBS I
have to wait for each individual thread to load, for the "post reply"
screen to load, for sorting options to affect my display etc. -- as with
all web interfaces, you have a high additional latency as every aspect of
the interface is generated "on demand".
8) Bulletin board systems have a higher noise level. They allow no easy
client-side filtering, as many email clients do. Many BBS encourage the
use of fonts, pictures, animated smileys, overlong signatures etc., often
leading to very hard to read threads.
9) Every BBS is different. Everyone is familiar with email, but learning
to use a BBS always requires making yourself familiar with its particular
user interface and functionality.
10) Mailing lists can be easily moderated, even in groups. BBS usually
have after-the-fact moderation, where individual posts are censored or
threads are locked. On a mailing list, posts can be pre-approved and
individual members banned. With a BBS that does not use some ID
confirmation method, we'll have the same banning problem we have on
Wikipedia proper -- totally open access is not always a good thing. And if
email confirmation is required, this only advantage of a web-based BBS
goes away.
A motivated and informed writer could certainly expand the above list to
10 times this length. Any of the advantages that people cite for bulletin
boards -- such as easier participation -- can be easily replicated with
mailing lists. For example, the Wikipedia mailing lists are available
through the portal
http://www.gmane.org
and can be accessed with a newsreader or webbrowser. In other words: Not
only can mailing lists be read with an email or webmail client, they can
also be read with a newsreader or BBS-style interface! Now try reading a
BBS with an email client or newsreader.
I will not participate in any BBS. Of all the forums that the Internet
offers, bulletin boards are among the worst.
Regards,
Erik