[Tutor] Please use plain text.

[Alan Gauld]

"Wayne Watson" <sierra_mtnview at sbcglobal.net> wrote 

> Personally, I'd rather see these mail lists turn into forums formats. 

Web forums are far less useful than mailing lists for technical groups.
They require internet access and a browser to read them. 
Many require a graphical browser so don't work in text mode 
terminals. Very few are available via news feeds (and therefore 
miss out on the power of newsreaders for effective bulk reading)
and many have quite poor search and archive capabilities.

Many programmers work in mixed environments where graphical 
browers are non existent, or they are offline for extended periods. 
Similarly those who have to process many hundreds of messages 
a day tend to find news feeds more effective. There are python 
web forums(fora?) but I confess I don;t read any of them. But I do 
read half a dozen of the mailing lists (all via news feeds).

Of course it may just be what I'm used to from the early days of 
the net, but I've yet to find a web forum that provides anything 
like the functionality of a newsgroup or the flexibility of a mailing 
list! Sadly forums do seem to be slowly taking over...

And of course the mailing lists are easily readable on the web 
too via gmane, Activestate or the official archives.

Alan G.