Mailing List VS Forums, Cultural Difference?

I post this on the Interaction designers mailing list, - a great list which provides lots of extra information on interaction design, usability, etc.

I've been following this list for a while, passively though. I feel this is a great list including various interesting discussions. However, I also have found some drawbacks of mailing list that I don't like very much. For example, threads are a bit disorganized. You have to jump from different emails to find out what people are talking. If you missed the beginning of the thread, it becomes difficult to follow.

In China, mailing list only used for news, announcements, etc. not for discussion. People tend to discuss on forums. The project I'm doing now includes two forums for Chinese interaction designers and western interaction designers in each language. The interesting thing I found is the Chinese one quickly attracted many users whereas the English one didn't.

I personally think that forums are more organized and easier to follow. I wonder if this is just personal preference or cultural difference.

And here are the feedback from other list members:

lada: I guess it's a personal preference, but if (IF) there is an underlying cultural difference, it is likely to be in the different levels of 'space commonality' (am wearing two hats now, of a cognitive scientist and an ex-cross-cultural trainer).

From personal observations, forums are mostly accessed through web
interfaces (any data on that?), and web spaces bear a psychological tag of 'common spaces'. Reading through the web, one reads the content 'out there'. To the contrary, mail lists are mostly accessed through specialised mailer programs. Once you are subscribed, the content comes to you (not you come to the content), and you read it 'in here', in the privacy of you very own (typically, individually configured) mail space.

Chinese culture is collectivistic, while, say, American culture is very much individualistic (see Geert Hofstede's "Culture and Organizations: Software of the Mind": USA has Individualism Index of 91, while Hong Kong scores 25 and Taiwan 17 (sorry, no data for mainland China)). Speculatively, Chinese may prefer more common spaces, while Westerners may subconsciously prefer more private spaces for discussions.

David Heller: As a USer I can express the following points as to why I prefer e-mail for this environment.

1. I feel that communities are conversations and the pull-like method of a web-based or newsreader based forum prohibit the back & forth flow that is a natural part of a conversation.

2. Regarding threading -- Isn't this just a software issue? Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc. all have increadibly good threading (especially
Gmail) that allows you to group by "conversation" or "thread".

3. Regarding over trimming -- this is a double-edged sword which is probably an issue of e-mail ... But b/c of #1, I don't see it going away. ;) But b/c of #2 it shouldn't be a big deal.

Abhishek Thakkar: In my opinion the difference is very similar to "Delivery or Takeaway" option of Food chains :D. As a personal observation, In India, and in my neighbourhood, people (active posters + lurkers = users) prefer a home delivery of the discussion rather than going up and checking the board everytime they log on to net. And this is not just for the IxD list, I am talking of Alumni groups, batch newsgroups, Hobbie Groups etc etc, from Users ranging from "always connected" type as in IITB undergrads who take it one mail at a time to "less connected" school batchmates who subscribe it in daily digest form.

If you have the option of _free home delivery_ , would you go for a _takeaway_? :D As a co-admin of my school alumni group, I have been unsuccessful to persuade people to shift from the mailing list to forums, On popular vote it was decided that even personal mails on the groups show who's alive and getting in touch with who. :) One interesting thing was the maximum opposition we faced was from the "lurkers", otherwise absent, but became suddenly active seeing the shifting phenomenon.

There are some papers on ACM SIGCHI on Online communities and Lurker habits which are worthwhile reads.

Interesting, isn't it? Lada's feedback well explained how different culture resulted in different online community preference. Abhishek's "Delivery or Takeaway" sounds fun! This is another example of how people see things different.