[Cryptography] Can we move this list to an online forum please?

Lodewijk andré de la porte l at odewijk.nl
Wed Dec 25 20:10:27 EST 2013


But then some people have to move away from mut!

It's also not actually superior. What do you really gain? Hard to archive.
No more transparant to browse. More susceptible to a lot of things.

Ultimately the premise is the same:

Medium = [Subject]
Subject = (String, [Email])
Email = (Headers, String)

The only arguable difference is in catagorization. It's like a single tag
is added to every subject. Usually called the 'category'. People always
miscatagorize and this list is supposed to be pretty much a single category
("cryptography").

If there's really a need for tags we can prepend them to our subject lines.
"[pol]" or "[tech]" are the mayor mayor differences. We can also put intent
into them, but that would require more thought of notation. Stuff like
"publish" or "Request For Comments" or "Discuss" or "news" would be
interesting tags.

In the end the ability of present forums to organize discussion is
dissapointing to the potential. Additionally the workflow of present forums
is far inferior to mailing lists.


Worst of all is reputation systems inherent in forums. Reputation is not
earned through any one objective measure, especially a non personalizable
one. All systems attempt to approximate, and often fail.

To me the answer is: rather not.

Pro:
 * Potential for more advanced discussions (metadata)
 * Sometimes easier to manage large volumes or content or users (community
management)
 * Doesn't distract as much as e-mail (more self-contained)
 * More personalizable profiles (username, signature, profile picture,
bio/contact info)
 * (Maybe) easier to do psuedononymously

Con:
 * Not embedded in standards. (subject to strange change)
 * No to very very little archivability (will dissapear, with content, more
easily)
 * Does not fit existing workflow that works through e-mail (Less
usual/habitual)
 * Far from client native user interface; E-mail sees better support than
"the web", because it's simpler. (Lowered usability)
 * Increased hassle will likely decrease users. The forums don't end up in
your inbox, so to speak. E-mail aggregates into your mail-client, forums
are spread thin accross countless pages. (Additional effort, not just a
habitual argument.)

Note that Spam and Espionage are still equally large problems in forum
software.
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