User:Ms7821/Why forums suck

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Feature masturbation (see also: Google Wave)

  • Wiki/piratepad better for collaboration
  • IRC/jabber better for informal chat
  • Email better for discussion
  • Imgur better for image macros

Maintenance overhead

  • Pointless posting encouraged, so more staff needed to keep overview
  • Moving threads, keeping OT, managing boards is all overhead
  • Involves running your own spam filters

Lack of support

  • No widely used, secure, feature-complete software
  • Crap search (especially compared to google groups/gmail)
  • Most systems don't use hierarchical threading

Doesn't replace email

  • If linked to email, why not just use a mailing list manager?
  • Otherwise, depends on web access to check it and will die out immediately
  • Which boards should people subscribe to?
  • Mental overhead/bad pattern fit
  • People can't sort forum posts into their own folders or star them
  • Forums encourage deletion, of individual threads or entire topics. Email means there's a paper trail.