At 23.53 -0400 04-10-18, Keith Moore wrote:
If anything, it seems like a really effective medium for group conversation
would need to be a lot more functional than anything we can expect to
implement via a user interface for interpersonal email.
Actually, almost all successful group communication systems
I have tried in recent years have e-mail integration. This
e-mail integration can include one or more of the following
functionalities:
(a) All new messages to groups, in which I am a member, can
be sent to me by e-mail, too.
(b) When I get this e-mial, I can reply, either using the
mail reply command and send the mail to the group, or by
clicking on a URL in the e-mail to get to a page in the
groupware where I can write the reply.
(c) An alternative to sending full group messages by e-mail
to members, is to send summaries, for example lists of
titles, which the e-mail user can click on to get this
message in the groupware. These messages may be sent only
for example once a day.
Why do so many group communication systems have one of the
commands above? The reason is that e-mail works as a kind
of "news reporting service" (Not "news" in the "netnews"
sense). A news reporting system is a system which tells me
what is new and of interest to me. Examples of such news:
(1) New e-mail, both personal and via mailing lists
(2) Messages in groups in which you are a member
(3) New contributions to blogs
(4) Changes to web pages of importance to you
To make (3) and (4) available via e-mail, people subscribe
to services which check web pages for changes, and send
notifications by e-mail when certain web pages have changed.
Group communication is today mainly done using one of the
following technologies:
(A) E-mail mailing lists handled by software like Listserv
or Mailman
(B) Netnews newsgroups
(C) Special groupware software like Lotus Notes and
First Class
I have for many years thought that a really successful
group communication system should combine all these three
functionalities, so that people can choose to interface to
them via either of these three user interfaces.
I have tried to persuade the developers of First Class, to
develop First Class in this direction, but not succeeded
yet in getting them to see the market potential for such a
system. First Class is a very good groupware, when using
its own client software, but does not have a very good
e-mail interface at present.
--
Jacob Palme <jpalme(_at_)dsv(_dot_)su(_dot_)se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/