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Why do projects still use mailing lists for support?

1 points by lhnn ↗ HN
Mailing lists seem to be less easy to navigate and search, and the hierarchy of messages is more confusing than a message board. You can't add keyword indeces, and the UI is often worse.

If people want a minimalist interface or an email interface to a support and discussion website, I'm sure an API could be built for an otherwise full-featured site.

4 comments

[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 23.8 ms ] thread
spooneybarger
I hate discussion sites. I vastly prefer email where I get it all sent to me, can have it stored for easy reference, searching etc.

I would ask if you go to discussion site style, why have a site at all? Why not just have a standard tag people use on stackoverflow?

mindcrime
W-w-what?!?? C'mon... yet one more username/password to remember, yet one more (different) set of navigation idioms (no two discussion / forum sites are layed out the same), little or no ability to view content offline, inconsistent or non-existent ability to tag / filter / route messages per my own needs... forums are a horrible mechanism for support, compared to email. With email, the messages are delivered to my email client using credentials that are already configured, are available for review anywhere (once downloaded), are threaded according to well understood mechanisms, and can be filtered, tagged, sorted, etc. any way I like.

As far as I'm concerned, the question should be "why would any project not use email for support?"

lhnn
Fair enough. With OAuth these days, you wouldn't need a separate username / password, but your point stands.

I do believe sites have much better mechanisms for sorting and searching compared to the web-interfaces of mailing lists.

Therefore, my next question could be, "why are mailing list web interfaces so horrendous compared to sites?"

mindcrime
I do believe sites have much better mechanisms for sorting and searching compared to the web-interfaces of mailing lists.

If you're talking about using, for example, the web interface for Yahoo Groups or something, then maybe yeah. But if you're having the messages delivered to your email, and reading it with either GMail or a standalone client like Thunderbird, I think email wins on "searchability." I personally haven't found most forum sites to have terribly good search.

"why are mailing list web interfaces so horrendous compared to sites?"

Good question. :-)