Google Groups vs MobileRead?

[Jim Miller]

While FanFicFare has web service and CLI versions, the Calibre plugin
version is the most popular version and gets the most attention.

And because Calibre plugins always have to have a discussion thread on
MobileRead.com (it's a Calibre thing), we've had two different
discussion groups for the last few years, one here and one there.

Over on MobileRead we've started a discussion about possibly getting
FanFicFare it's own sub-forum on MobileRead and trying to consolidate
support for all three versions there. This group wouldn't be deleted
any time soon, but announcements would happen there instead and we'd be
directing users there to ask questions.

So what do people here think about moving to MobileRead?

The sub-forum discussion thread is:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259162

The FanFicFare plugin thread is:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259221

[Tara Li]

My vote is "no".

Here's my arguments against:

1) To comment, I need to make yet *ANOTHER* forum website login.  Got a nice collection already started - that I can't keep track of, most of the time.

2) To see the discussion, I have to actually go *there*, instead of, as with Google Groups, the discussion simply coming to my already subscribed e-mail address.  If it were a fire-and-forget thing, I would probably log in long enough to follow the whole subforum, but I suspect it only sends me notices that X thread has been updated, rather than the actual content of the updates.

I cannot for the life of me understand just why people find forums so attractive.  Give me a mailing list any day.

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[Montana Harper]

I understand and appreciate Tara's perspectives, and I, too, am not a huge fan of forums, but in this case I think a forum would serve FFF better.

It's not as fire-and-forget as the Google Groups (though you can subscribe to threads and it'll send you an email the next time someone posts to the thread with (IIRC) the text of their comment, but you do have to go to the forum to respond or to "reset" the email option and get the next email notification of a thread post), but when the Google Groups is used purely as a mailing list, it doesn't serve as a repository of previously asked questions and answers. I can't speak for how other people use it, but I only go to the web interface when I have a question; I don't ever think of going there to research asked and answered questions of others, the way I do with a forum.

Reading over the existing current forum discussion, I think FFF should definitely have its own subforum, probably under E-Book Software rather than under Calibre, since the Calibre plugin is only one of three versions of the product you support, two of which aren't directly dependent on Calibre (as I understand it).

Anyway, there's my 2 cents, for whatever it's worth in the current economy. :-)