----- Original Message -----
From: CHRIS.SNYDER
To: N4AOF
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 19:44
Subject: NRCEV Discussion Group
>
> Hi Tom,
>
> First want to thank you for your continued moderation of the Yahoo NRCEV
> group.
>
> I wanted to contact you because I wanted your input on something.
> I have been thinking of moving the discussion group to a phpBB Forum.
> I don't particularly have any problems with the Yahoo forum, it's just
> that using phpBB would provide better management of the forums and
> some additional features.

> The biggest advantages that I see is that we can organize the
> discussion in some logical order. This will help people find
> and follow discussion better that what you can do with yahoo.

> Another feature is that we can "lock out" forums. This can be
> especially useful for posting we want to make for everyone to
> be able to read, but want any discussion to be held in a separate
> forum. This can allow us to post newsletters and other items and
> not have the "posting" forum get cluttered with discussions.
> Again a way to help keep the site clean and organized.
>
> Chris, NG3F

That could be an interesting idea. I'm a user on several forums that use
the phpBB software and that software itself seems to work pretty well from a
user standpoint. I've never tried moderating a phpBB Forum so I have no
idea what needs to be done but from my experiences as a user I suppose I
have at least a reasonable idea of the features available and what they look
like for the users.

The forum format certainly provides better organization of multiple
discussions, which could be a major advantage if there were a lot of
different discussions going on at the same time.

The one disadvantage that I see to a Forum compared to a Mail List is that
the user has to go to the Forum to look for new posts but with a mail list
the user can choose to have all new content come directly to his or her
mailbox.

If we had more traffic in the NRCEV group, I think a forum could be a big
improvement, but so far the traffic in the NRCEV Group on Yahoo has been
very light -- quite a few people seem interested in the idea but most don't
see to have much that they want to talk about (which surprises me quite a
bit because hams are usually very talkative and Emergency Communications is
often a hot topic).

I would guess that most of the members on the Yahoo Group are also familiar
with various Forums, perhaps some of the members will share their thoughts
on which format they prefer.

73 de Tom
N4AOF, WPOL710
ex-DA1NB, ex-KGQ9027
etc., etc.