On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 6:49 AM, John Formsma <formsma at gmail.com> wrote: > ...replies for the same topic begin their separate new thread. It > makes it frustrating to try to read the same discussion: replies > keep showing up in multiple threads. Hi John -- message threading involves both the sending and receiving email client programs, their users, and to a lesser extent the Mailman software that shuffles these messages along their way. Peer pressure occasionally works to gain compatible behavior and/or software, but email as a technology is full of history and arcana (remind you of anything?) that isn't likely to be solved by making simple changes on the PTG server. > Anyone else seeing the same thing? Are folks just not selecting > 'Reply' with their email software? Maybe it's my problem -- using > Gmail, and perhaps there's some quirk there. I use Gmail too, and have used a lot of different programs before it. I think Gmail does relatively good job maintaining the threading of a discussion. There do always seem to be exception cases. > Second thing. There has been talk of making the list a web > discussion forum (similar to Pianoworld's). Any progress on that? On behalf of the Electronic Communications Committee, I conducted some experiments that melded a forum (phpBB, similar to PianoWorld's) and the stream of discussion on a couple of the PTG mailing lists. I thought it went relatively well, but that experiment is defunct, replaced by the broader topic of PTG membership software as it would its way through the decision making process. The new software includes community discussion features, and is currently under investigation for use with the PTG mailing lists. > While that certainly has its limitations, it at least tends to > keep the same discussions threaded together. I agree, forums are better for many kinds of discussion that email has never really caught up with. As far as upgrading the mailing list, I don't know how the new PTG membership software community features will work out. I don't know how well it will integrate with the email list, but I consider that a critical feature. It's in "beta" testing right now. > One other forum I subscribe to has a nice feature of highlighting > new discussion activity. You can easily see all threads, but only > the ones that have new activity are shown in bold and/or > highlighted text. My favorite discussion software was Google Wave. I thought they really nailed the problems of diverging discussions and message thread presentation. But it never gained traction and is now on the way out. Jim
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