[ripe-list] The Future of Discussion Lists

On Fri 2023-05-26 10:31:16+0200 Gert wrote:
> One of the big advantages of e-mail is the asynchronity of
> communication, as in "I do not have to be awake to follow a
> discussion that started in a different timezone, and reply to it".

+1. I think discord or some other 'chat' medium is fine for "I need
support for X *right now*", but horrible for longer discussions with
multiple people.

> One of the big disadvantages of e-mail is the asynchronity of
> communication, as in "this reply to something which was written many
> days ago is drowned by a communication thread that has long drifted
> to a different topic"...
>
> And whatever we do, anything I've seen so far does not truly scale
> beyond "a few handful of active participants" - a mail thread with
> 1000 active participants will overwhelm readers as much as a teams or
> forums discussion, or a videocall...  this is the really hard problem
> I see.

Yes, but at least email has threading to group subjects together so you
can easily review/ignore/delete/archive. Following a long
multi-participant discussion in chat rooms is nigh impossible. Even if
the platform has a way to 'reply to thread', many people aren't aware
of it.

/Robert