> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Herman Miller
> I've always favored mailing lists and newsgroups for
> discussion, but I
> can see the potential benefits of a web-based site. For one
> thing, it's
> easier to find web forums. For another, a forum can be
organized by
> topic into subforums. That should be enough to keep auxlang
topics
> separate from artlang and engelang topics. A Unicode-friendly
> site would
> be essential, but once it's set up, the problems we still have
with
> character encodings on the mailing list would go away. (A web
> site might
> end up with its own set of Unicode problems, on the other
hand.)
>
> The thing is, it's so easy to follow discussions in mailing
lists and
> newsgroups. Spacebar, spacebar, spacebar. I haven't seen a web
forum
> that doesn't have an awkward interface with long load times
between
> pages. So it has drawbacks, but there are also potential
benefits.
>
Unicode-friendly would be really nice for any medium, but I have
to say that I absolutely *hate* just about anything that's
web-based, unless it's just a simple site with text and
hyperlinks. Blogs are nothing but a nuisance to navigate and I
hate putting information into clumsy web forms.
> It would also be convenient to have a place for discussion of
> concultures and world-building alongside the conlanging
forums. The
> conculture Yahoogroup exists, but it's mainly dominated by
> alternative history scenarios, and it's a Yahoogroup. The
world doesn't need
>any more Yahoogroups.
I'm not a big fan of anything Yahoo, but there is one major
advantage having mainly to do with the ability to easily
moderate the groups to keep the undesirables from spoiling
everything. That's really the only reason I've ever bothered
putting anything there. The polling feature is kind of neat
too.