(I’m not really expecting this post to generate any answers, as this site still isn’t quite ready for prime time – I rushed it out the door to fulfil a portfolio requirement for a job I had applied to. Still, I like the idea of posting questions to one’s blog (rather than findings or opinions) as potentially the audience could be quite distributed, diverse, and unknown to you. this last part is probably one of the more fascinating aspects of blogs and knowledge building/collective intelligence. I guess the old time Usenet newsgroups were similar in being able to ask a question to a large audience you didn’t know, but even there you did some pre-selection in the groups you were posting to. Maybe some of the community sites offer similar functionality. Anyways, I digress)
A colleague sent me an email asking if I had any references he could cite to pieces that argue for the use of web-based discussion forums over email-based mailing lists. My first reaction was to email him my opinion that these shouldn’t be an either/or question, and that the best solutions allowed one to use either mechanism to interact with a discussion. And I am very much a believer in this – it first became clear to me when I saw the hypermail interface to majordomo, and probably should have clicked earlier simply based on how Usenet worked – one could interact with it through an email client or through a ‘news’ client, but the important thing was the discussion.
But all of this got me wondering – where does one find good resources comparing the various CMC/CSCW methods for efficacy? Any starting points truly appreciated.
(I will get the ‘Comments’ feature working real soon, but if someone does actually read this and want to contribute, they can email me at leslies@island.net)