RE: [-empyre-] building better list software

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

thanks for the url, andreas. i found the writing at
http://www.discordia.us/scoop/special/whydiscordia interesting in its
articulation of problems with lists and the relative attractions of web
forums/lists.

the discordia project looks interesting and promising, though i am not sure
what separates it from intelligent use of pre-existing blog software. or
maybe the blog is the starting point of this software project and it grows
from there. are they using open source php blog software as the 'kernel' of
the project?

ja


> http://www.discordia.us/
>
> discordia was initiated exactly with the idea in mind to improve
> certain aspects of online communication and to work around
> disadvantages of lists. while i a sympathetic to discordia, i hardly
> find the time to follow discussions there, while i have no problem
> following lists such as Spectre, Rohrpost, Xchange, Nettime, or the
> Sarai Reader-list, because i can read those when i'm somewhere
> offline.
>
> i also believe that the issue of reading and being online/offline is
> very important for lists. with the Spectre list (and, in the past,
> the original Syndicate list) we find that a lot of people with
> unstable modem connections are dependent on a 'light' channel.
>
> personally, i also like the mix between synchronicity and
> asynchronicity on lists which you get by people being present at
> different times, entering different speeds into the communication;
> this is also the result of different types and speeds of connection
> to the net, and the result of personal choices. (some people see
> e-mail as it is coming in, all the time, while others - incl. myself
> - only check their mailboxes occasionally over the day in order to
> avoid the constant distraction.)
>
> greetings,
> -a