Jay, first off, I do appreciate your effort in creating the forum. But a better format is in the eye of the user. I set up my gmail account exclusively for utah-astronomy. That's all that I receive at this email. Even my personal email and work email go to a different address. The gmail format makes it very easy to select topics at a glance, without even having to go to a particular forum once on a forum-based site. At any given time, there are dozens of list-serve messages that go unread or get deleted, simply on the basis of an uninteresting or off-topic subject line. Easy. I've been on several forums for years now and it became wearisome, having to click on various threads and scroll through replies. Just this past fall, I quit no fewer than 3 forums, all dedicated to a very keen interest of mine. They all took way more time than a list-serve. To me, a list-serve is the superior format. I haven't even been on CN in ages, mostly because there is too much chaff to sort through, to get to the grain. Way too much of a time-sink. True, many people don't quite get list-serve etiquette. They either include entire digests in their replies, or otherwise don't edit the post they are replying to, to include only the relevant text. Many times they reply to the wrong subject, or create a new subject line when replying to the existing one. It gets frustrating, but it's still easier for me to navigate, especially in the gmail format, than a forum. Finally, as a former admin on a sports-car forum, I can tell you that you will be spending a lot of time just maintaining your boards. Far more than you may think, especially once the spammers find you. And flame wars aren't fun to moderate, either. I'm glad I'm out of the admin business for good. The nuts-and-bolts stuff took all the fun out of the interchange of ideas. I wish your new forum luck. I may join sometime down the road, but for now, good old utah-astronomy suits me. On 12/15/11, Jay Eads <jayleads@gmail.com> wrote:

Joe,

I touched on why I created the forums in an earlier post but I'll expand it here. I'm in class tonight so I may expand more on it later. First, the forums should be open to a guest. I'll have to go in sometime between now and Sunday and open it up . . . its probably a feature I just haven't clicked on yet in my large admin list.

In terms of the board, I am tired of all the email I get from UtahAstronomy (yes, I contribute to that also) to the point that I was ready to quit a couple of times. I finally set it up to where I have to access the board to see or reply to a message. That has worked. In terms of the forum, I like that I can attach lists, which I have done on several observing lists, post on the subjects or read the subject/topics that interest me and ignore the others. I like the fact that someone could ignore me or I them if I want. For me personally, it is a much better system for communicating and discussing. It is also easier to search in my opinion and easier in a small group like this to find older posts. Finally, I can (if we can't I just have to allow it but I am pretty sure I can and I'll upload a sketch there) post images and pictures directly and with an attachments so I don't have to click a link to see an image. All in all, a better format so I'll be posting most of my stuff over there from now on and simply becoming a reader here including when and where I am observing.