Mailing list vs. web forum

arthur at wolfstad.com arthur at wolfstad.com
Wed Apr 12 19:49:52 CEST 2006


Hi,

I would like to add my two cents to the discussion on mailing lists versus web forums.

Some time ago I added a web forum to my own website, Disney Comics Worldwide at http://www.wolfstad.com/dcw/ . Just as a test. I found that many people were viewing it, but not many were posting. I experimented with different categories, but there were never any serious discussions - just a lot of spam.

Only the W.i.t.c.h.-part of the forum was being used, and quite actively too. (This by itself is quite interesting; I see that new Disney comic formulas like W.i.t.c.h. and Disney Fairies are immensely popular in some countries, seemingly more so than the comics with traditional characters that most of us on this list care about)

Anyway, after one year I decided to stop the DCW Forum and make it a W.i.t.c.h. Forum only, so I set up a new site at http://www.kandrakar.com/ . This web forum is being used actively by fans of the comic from around the world, it has its own moderators and all I do is go in to make regular backups.

I believe that if DCML was a web forum (DCWF) it would attract a very different crowd. Firstly, I think you'd get a lot of young people who Google 'Mickey' and end up on the site. And secondly, I think you'll get a lot of spam and messages like "I found a mint copy of Uncle Scrooge Adventures 16 from 1989 in my basement. Does anyone know how much it is worth?". I get loads of emails like that through DCW.

Someone said that the archiving of DCML could be better, but I think having the archive in Google Groups is excellent. I am not at all impressed by the search functionality of web forums like phpBB or vBulletin.

Kind regards,
Arthur


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