Hi Sean,

Thanks for giving us the historic context. Personally, I'm quite happy
with the list. I know this is very subjective, but a mailing list
gives me more a sense of community than a newsgroup. Also, people tend
to behave better on a list than in a newsgroup. I think that's because
you really have to JOIN a list whereas a newsgroup is something you
can just "visit"; it's more open, more like a public place (which has
its advantages too, see below).

> ...The connection speed is important, it allows this list to act
> more like a chat group. There have been plenty of times where posts
> are received in less than a minute!

They usually do. At least that's my impression, I don't time them.

> ...This solution does, unfortunately, require that anyone wishing to
> post a message must join YahooGroups and subscribe to this mailing
> list.

The nice thing is: you don't even have to create a YahooGroups
account. You can just subscribe like you subscribe to any mailing
list. I still haven't got a YahooGroups account; I once tried creating
one because I wanted to check out an uploaded file, but some Yahoo
server script had a hickup; same story two days later and I didn't
bother to try again...


But still: what if ib-support (and/or other IB/FB lists) were to move
to a regular newgroup in the comp.databases hierarchy? I can think of
the following disadvantages:

- more noise;
- spam;
- longer turnaround (depending on the user's server)

Advantages would be:

- better visibility to the outside world (people hop and browse ngs,
not mailing lists) --> more exposure for Firebird;
- lower threshold for newcomers who want to ask questions;
- mailing list gateway still possible (Oh yeah? In fact I'm not sure
of this one but it *does* make it 3-3 :-))


Greetings,
Paul Vinkenoog