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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 4791

Posted by subs
2005-12-20 23:03:16

Last weekend I posted a message which disappeared. It went something like.

This forum (software) was probably good in its time, but its time has now passed. With Yahoo groups you are locking you data in, yet again. An open source solution where your forum content is readily accessible would IMO be a better solution.

Further I don’t personally like Yahoo groups. You can’t see all messages in a thread, you can’t see just a list of threads, the html editor isn’t very good, you can’t edit a message once it is posted, and I just find it dated and awkward to use. :)

There are some good (free) Content Management Systems with Forums around. For example Drupal and Simple Machines, amongst others.

Heading down this path would open up a range of new possibilities. For example people could write reviews of products, news items could be published, a categorized listing of products established etc. This would add considerably value to Outliners.com and get more people interested in it.

I have no doubt there are many people that read Outliners.com but rarely, if ever contribute. I have received several e-mails from such people following my recent writings with quite interesting comments. Here is one:

“I’ve followed the comments from ouliners.com for some years now. I’ve come to the conclusion that you can not persuade many of the members with reason and facts. They like what they know and know what the like. I’m not sure that another crank (me) adds much value to the cornucopia of opinion.”

It is a real pity that people feel this way, as I’m sure they could make very valuable contributions. Maybe a better platform would help.

In my original e-mail I offered to host a forum/cms at no charge on my server. Whether this is of interest, or you feel you would prefer not to be tied in any way with a software vendor doesn’t matter to me. But I would urge the group to look at heading down the open source cms/forum path, rather than Yahoo Groups.

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