North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Road's End Farm <organic87@frontiernet.net>]

On Aug 10, 2011, at 12:50 AM, Ginda Fisher wrote:

> Email is "push" and a forum is "pull". Email just shows up on my  
> computer, and tells me it exists (you have 8 unread messages in your  
> NAFEX folder) whereas I need to actively click on a link to even  
> know if there's been any activity on the forum.

This is at least half of it, I think. Adding the nuisance of having to  
log on each time (again, my browser is set to clear all personal info  
on closing and I shut the computer down at night, so yes, I would need  
to log on at least once a day, even if it works for some other people  
to remain permanently logged in) and I am just much less likely to  
bother.

Some of the other half is that I find it much easier to respond by  
email: because I choose my email program, and it works the way I want  
and the way I'm used to. Message boards use different setups, and it's  
the board that chooses the setup, so I'm generally trying to work in a  
format that's in one way or another harder for me to use. In the  
course of composing one reply on a board I may run into several minor  
nuisances; they are usually all minor, but it adds up, and  
significantly reduces the chances that I'll bother.

And the rest is that I can set up my own email so that the email  
discussion is automatically saved on my computer unless/until I decide  
to delete it. In order to save a forum discussion locally, I have to  
actively copy and paste the information over. Yes, I know it's  
supposedly saved by the forum servers; but a) this doesn't work if I  
want to look something up while the internet connection's down, which  
happens from time to time and b) archives have been known to disappear  
or become inaccessible for various reasons; having the info saved both  
in the online archives and locally makes it less likely for it to be  
permanently lost.

I guess that by now we've just totally lost all the fruit explorers  
who for one reason or another aren't online at all?


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale