On mailing lists vs. message boards
By Edward Willis (
http://encw.xyz and
gopher://encw.xyz)
Published Feb/12/2025
Now, to clarify, by mailing list I mean email discussion list, and not
advertising mailing list.
I find that message boards, and other pull style communication systems, make me
a bit anxious. I'm always logging in and checking them so I don't miss
anything. It is easy to miss something if you don't check at least every day on
busier forums. Locals.com and other similar social media style private
communities are particularly bad about this. It makes discovery so difficult,
what with it having no topics or subforums. Once something is off the front
page/feed it gets buried. If you're a member of a lot of message boards it
quickly becomes overwhelming, and you have to cut back on some. I tend to go in
cycles of activity on the different boards I am a member of, but many boards I
have dropped entirely.
With mailing lists, everything you're signed up for comes to you, and you can
read and respond at your own pace. You don't have to regularly visit many
different websites to stay in the loop.
Not everyone likes or is well served by the same message board software. And
every new message board might use different software, so you're forced to
become acquainted with many duplicate systems.
With mailing lists you use the same email client you're already using. Email
filters can put your different mailing lists into separate folders for easy
organization, and keep your inbox clean.
On message boards people tend to use handles, but with email they tend to use
their real names, and using real names tends to mean less toxicity and getting
to know people better.
Message boards often have a "like" system. I'm sure most people are familiar
with such systems, but just in case: A like system is one where each message is
accompanied by a button that increases a visible counter. Each user can press
the button to "like" the message, and increase the counter. Each user can
usually only "like" the message once, with the button acting like a toggle, and
pressing it again usually removes the "like" from the counter. Such systems, I
have found, tend to result in pettiness, cliques, groupthink, and
self-censorship.
Message boards do have their positives, of course:
* Users can easily search old content, which reduces the number of duplicate
threads. Of course, you can host a searchable mailing list archive.
* Content on message boards is indexed by search engines. Good if you're
looking for exposure to potential new users. Of course, if you have an online
archive of your mailing list, it'll be indexed as well.
It seems that the positives of a message board can be achieved by a mailing
list by adding a web archive.
Though it is likely already obvious to all: I prefer mailing lists.
http://mlmmj.org is an easy, light weight mailing list server software.
