Email Tasks continued

Email Lists

Think about the following questions (it may help to discuss them with other students on the discussion board)

• What are the pros and cons of email lists versus discussion boards?
• Are there certain kinds of communication or purposes more suited to one than the other?

Email Lists

For this I decided to join the group task that was set out by Cynthia.

http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/internetstudies
My name on this email list was dux1491; I carefully looked at what was on offer and joined a few other types of lists that were available to see the differences.

Lists – Pros

A)   Email is sent to directly to your account, keeping you informed.

B)   Allows creativity as every users input will be vital to the list.

C)   Some lists set a guideline of what they would like to know about you, they send this as a part of there moderation teams effort to keep in touch with you.

E)  Topics flow more which sets a interesting discussion to take place were people’s opinon count more, because they have the freedom of speech.  

While there was no generalized set of rules for internet studies sent to me I was clearly notified after joining the other group located on the same site. Church of Christ sent me a valid list of Church of Christ@yahoogroups.com.

MODERATORS’ POLICY STATEMENT ON PERSONALITIES, DIVISIVE ARGUMENTS, AND LIST DISCIPLINE (September 28, 2000)

This kind of developed list that gives the list team members be given the rules and told  what is acceptable public debate and talk, and what is not acceptable.

Lists- Cons

A)  With the amount of mail that I was receiving by just joining the list, you would defiantly need an established rule structure for your mail box. I bypassed this problem by creating a yahoo account so my email inbox would not be as affected so much.

B)   More time needed if something goes wrong with regards to what you are saying on the list particularly on the yahoo email list.

C)   You have to find the archives on a web site, so they are less accessible than on a discussion board. With setting this up I had to join yahoo in order to access the full list of what was offered in there email list.

D)    Knowledge is very limited to only who is on the list so it dampens the view to a very short view point than many other mediums.

Newsgroups

Newsgroups-Pro

A)   Forte Agent is a great program and found that the search functions in it very useful, many different other programs out there contain similar email functions, so a combination could be good.

B) Newsgroups can bring people together to share a common interest.

C) Newsgroups allow you to understanding vast amount of topics in a variety of areas, similar to email lists, but on a wider audience.

Newsgroups-Cons

A)   Obtaining illegal material is easy via Usenet posts, very dangerous for younger viewers.

B)    Flaming and constant abuse is a popular aspect of Usenet

C)    Pedophiles and other underground types of people lurk within Usenet greater than normal web.

 

Path: news.optusnet.com.au!newsfeeder.syd.optusnet.com.au!news.optusnet.com.au!not-for-mail

From: Chris <ardist@hotmail.com>

Newsgroups: aus.sport.cricket

Subject: Michael Beaven

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:40:48 +1000

Message-ID: <eume54pba9doaenlnod5t2o643d0iecvli@4ax.com>

X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 4.2/32.1118 trialware

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Lines: 10

NNTP-Posting-Host: 220.237.87.168

X-Trace: 1213684840  30463 220.237.87.168

Xref: news.optusnet.com.au aus.sport.cricket:116913 

I really miss Michael Beaven, he was a great Australian player, would

have made excellent Captian Material.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd2J7GuL-CI

Big Wicket, but who bowled him over to force his hand into retirement from the game?

Michael Beaven RIP.

Are there certain kinds of communication or purposes more suited to one than the other?

 

Researching and weighing in the pros and cons to both products newsgroups and usenet,  email lists could be vastly better option than newsgroups for many purposes that also include security for your children while viewing the web. 

 

Newsgroups have there grey areas that could allow allot of pedophiles that can lurk in this area and I find that would not suit the most people once they work it out and that email lists can be moderated successfully and managed more coherently than just that of Usenet feeds.

 

Usenet newsgroups are the older version of the two and have been within the net for a vastly long time, but I find the non-filtering of them really destroys the communication process and capabilities of it. Newsgroups would have had a great ability to be used correctly but yet like many applications I really have come to the conclusion yet again only a selected few people would even know about it as the World Wide Web is pushed more via google and so on, it becomes vastly more appealing to join a email list.

 

Only major issue of email lists is the fact that any new posts will automatically get sent to your inbox therefore it is wise to set up your message rules so that you can especially file and delete the posts that you do not need.

 

The moderation of email lists provide a more successful and also encouraging method of discussing situations or topics depending on the pro’s and cons and what the product is going to be used for there are things to weigh up, I found newsgroups utterly filled with boring posts about how to become rich over night and pornographic type love letters and filthy language, yet not much moderation.

 

I then found email lists to be moderated that allowed the subject to be kept on that the subject without straying,  it was also interesting to see the rules sent to you to ensure the integrity of there email list be kept upon a new user joining the group.

 

As the internet grows vastly more people will be introduced to discussion forums on the world wide web, it would take vastly greater amount of learning by the person to understand how the functions of newsgroups work, and therefore I find that email lists could be greater than newsgroups.

 

After posting my topic about Michael Beaven on newsgroups nobody at all responded to it, it was like talking to a brick wall and receiving not even a comment, vast amount of posts were either knocking others or commenting on previous cricket match’s.

Just remembering the key aspects of net ettique when speaking in the public arena it is a vital component towards enjoying your internet, there is no need to get into serious heated arguements over anything, develop yourself as you develop your online interest.