[ale] Reply-To controversy: a solution

[ChangingLINKS.com]

I appreciate the research and effort you have put out to come up with this 
solution - it sounds awesome, up until the point where you wrote:

"On Sun April 20 2003 22:25, Joseph Knapka wrote:
> The unfortunate thing is that the lists *must* accept posts from
> non-members in order for this scheme to work."

I get the feeling that something bad is going to happen as a result of that 
loss of "security." One benefit we will lose is a fully-functional polling 
system (people post their opinions to the list and the results are counted 
from the list - as opposed to upstart alternatives). We can verify that the 
posters are "real people." Contrarily, there ain't too much we vote on.

My question:
Why have we not opted to go with the latest and greatest php threaded forum 
complete with pics (of ourselves) and emoticons? A forum like the one at 
www.tinyminds.org, but with less topics, and a way to click the poster's name 
that will send an email to them (without the email address being exposed to 
spam of course. 

I think that there would be MANY benefits, including but not limited to:

1. Seeing what the poster looks like.
2. Seeing the emoticon - to catch sarcasm the _first_ time.
3. The ability to EASILY create and use other forum topics 
    (in order of priority [OT], politics, flamewars, microsoft support, LAMP)
4. Better archive search functionality (haven't tried it at ale.org lately)
5. Strengthen ale.org (I used to study it's search engine placement and such)
6. The reply-to problem is eliminated AND only allow members to post.
7. Bells & Whistles (chat room, # of users online, # of posts by each member)
   7 1/2 of course there would still be email notification of reply posts
8. more configuration preferences to argue about.
9. Look cooler than other LUGs
10. It's late, can't think of a 10 - and the motion won't pass anyway. :(

I make a motion that we move to a forum based system (I can already hear the 
system admins who are clinging to dialup because it's the wave of the future 
and are devoid of a simple browser  on *any* of their boxes flaming the hair 
off my back).
-- 
Wishing you Happiness, Joy and Laughter,
Drew Brown
http://www.ChangingLINKS.com
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