[FFML] A thought on the future of the FFML

[The Wanderer]

On 06/26/2013 12:52 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 8:01 PM, The Wanderer <wanderer at fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
> 
>> If you're proposing what I think you are (either a Web-based forum
>> which automatically posts to the list, or transforming the list
>> into something which automatically posts to and receives posts from
>> a Web-based forum), the other problem I see is the one of quoting
>> styles.
>> 
>> What constitutes good quoting in a Web forum (much less in social
>> media) and what constitutes good quoting in E-mail are different
>> things. I've gone into detail on that in the past - in
>> rec.games.roguelike.angband, IIRC, after a proposal to create a
>> gateway between that group and the more active Web forum - and can
>> do so again if need be.
>> 
>> If that problem can be satisfactorily addressed, I think I might
>> like this approach. (And I'm about as hardcore a proponent of
>> mailing lists - including specifically plain-text mailing lists -
>> over Web forums as you're likely to find.)
> 
> Would you, please?  I can think of ways to do  forum with email
> quoting style, but if you already have a proposal written up...

It's not so much a proposal; it was more of a description of why "what
constitutes good quoting" would be different between the various forum
styles, necessarily including descriptions of those styles, in the hopes
that if someone did decide to move forward with a posting-gateway
project they would take those issues into account.

If I did derive a proposal from it, it would probably be of two simple 
elements:

* The Web forum should display exactly one post per page, just as you
   don't get the body of more than one E-mail displayed at a time.

* The post-presentation requirements (plain text vs. full HTML, or some
   intermediate level of formatting) should be the same for the Web forum
   as on the mailing list. (Full HTML, or even general forum-standard
   markup/markdown, would still be inappropriate for the mailing list
   IMO - but automatic translation between e.g. basic emphasis markup on
   the Web forum and something simple like *boldface* or /italics/ or
   _underlining_ emphasis on the mailing list might be an appropriate
   medium. Handling hyperlinks would be harder, but there might still be
   ways to do it - automatic footnote generation, for example.)


My post on this subject to r.g.r.angband - from December of 2007, for
those who may want to go dig into archives for the original and whatever
discussion it may have been involved in - is reproduced below, because I
don't think I can greatly improve on most of it as a summary of the
differences. I might go into more detail, and/or apply discussion more
specifically to our own situation, at a later point.

========================================================================

There will, at the least, be the problem of the incompatible
appropriate-quoting standards.

(In case it is not obvious what those are, why they are incompatible or
why this would be a problem, a discussion follows.)


"Appropriate quoting" is, put roughly, a style of quoting which is
suited to the nature and interface of the forum in which the quoting is
or is not being done. Quoting when the original material will be ready
to the reader's hand (and eye) without the quoting is generally not
appropriate; failing to quote when that material will not be so
available is almost invariably not appropriate.


I don't know what type of Web forum the one under discussion here is,
but as far as quoting patterns go, there are only three basic types.

There is the "separate page for every separate post" style, which is
comparatively rare; I can't bring any presently-active examples to mind.
On this type of forum, appropriate quoting is exactly the same as on
Usenet or in E-mail; however, this also loses at least some of the
purported advantages of Web fora.

There is the "separate page for each group of N responses to every
separate topic, with responses displayed in a flat list from oldest to
newest" style, which is fairly common; I believe that EZBoard's standard
forums are of this style, and it is IIRC one of the standard options for
displaying Slashdot discussions. On this type of forum, it is
appropriate to quote the post to which you are responding if it would
not otherwise be obvious what post that is, and/or if the post is old
enough that people could not easily scroll back and check - in other
words, if it is not displayed on the same page as the new post.

There is the "separate page for each thread, with each post therein
displayed indented under the message to which it is a reply" style,
which is not unheard of; it is used by a few comparatively private
forums which I have frequented, and is also one of the standard options
for displaying Slashdot discussions. (The LiveJournal comment system is
closely related to this, as well.) On this type of forum, it is almost
never appropriate to quote what you are replying to; the exception comes
if there has been or is likely to be an extended subthread in response
to the same post, such that it is not immediately clear which post yours
is a response to.


On Usenet and in E-mail, it is invariably appropriate to quote what you
are responding to from the message you are replying to; in point of
fact, failing to do so is inappropriate, and in some places will get you
flamed in rather short order.


With the exception of the first Web-forum style I mentioned, which as I
said is rare enough these days that I can't think of any presently
active examples, it is not generally appropriate to include quoted text
in a reply; it clutters the page with redundant information, and may
have other problems I'm not thinking of right offhand. Posts composed
for Usenet, with quoting included which would be correct here, would not
be appropriate on such a forum - and, in at least some forums with which
I seem to recall having been familiar, would not be well received.

On the flip side, posts composed without quotes - appropriate for such a
Web forum - appearing on a newsgroup (or a mailing list) would almost
certainly *not* be well received; I have seen fairly recent and fairly
frequent examples of people getting - shall we say, annoyed - by this to
the point of flaming the poster to Hell and back.


Automatically crossposting messages intended for a forum of one type
into a forum of the other type, then, is likely to irritate people on
both sides who expect (and in some cases demand) the quoting style which
is fitted to the forum they are reading.

Short of checking each message from one forum before posting it to the
other, and modifying the quotes or lack thereof as needed, I do not see
any way to avoid this as a problem. I also do not see any way to do that
kind of checking reliably in an automated fashion, and doing it in a
non-automated fashion (in other words, manually) would A: be fairly
tedious, B: require quite a bit of manpower which is probably not
available, and C: open the checker up to objections from people who did
not like what was being done with their posts.


If a way to resolve or avoid this problem can be found, I think a
crossposting setup would be an interesting experiment, and might well
work out. Without that, however, I do not see any way that it will not
just lead to hard feelings and conflict in the end.

========================================================================

> I've seen forum+list merges before.  They tend to be useful for
> special, limited audiences - but the FFML may well be such an
> audience.

I believe it depends strongly on how the Web forum is done - what style
of Web forum is chosen, and how it is configured - and on how the
interface between the Web forum and the mailing list is done.

I'm not sure it's entirely impossible for something like that to meet my
standards, but I don't think I've ever seen it happen in actual
practice. That doesn't mean we shouldn't at least look into it to see if
it might be possible to do it well, however.

-- 
    The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Every time you let somebody set a limit they start moving it.
   - LiveJournal user antonia_tiger