Re: discussion group: Ada use in Internet technologies

["Marc A. Criley" <mcquadex@earthlink.net>]

Terry Westley wrote:
> 
> 
> 1) Do you prefer to:
>    a)  Keep the discussions here in comp.lang.ada so as not to dilute this
> newsgroup
>    b) Create a separate forum (my choice would be Yahoo Groups)
>    c) Create an ACM SIGAda working group with support from ACM
>    d) other?

While such discussions can occur here in comp.lang.ada, there are
potential participants who have no desire to frequent newsgroups, so you
lose out on their experience and knowledge. Your original message also
noted that you'd gotten little assistance in the past from either
comp.lang.ada or Team Ada, so it seems option a) is already known to be
of questionable value.

Again, I cast my vote for a mailing list forum.  The ASIS (Ada Semantic
Interface Specification) mailing list forum has worked extremely well,
as it both stays highly focused and draws participants who are keenly
interested in that particular topic.

Personally (and this is just me :-), I'm not terribly interested in
joining another "discussion group"-type service--having to learn another
reading/posting interface (no matter how intuitive) and deal with ads,
ads, ads, just annoys me, doubly so if I have to go through a login
process. Plus, participants have to make an explicit effort to go read
the latest messages, versus discussions just showing up in their
In-Box.  (I know some people already deal with e-mail inundation and the
thought of getting even more makes them ill.  But it's the way I prefer
to participate in technical discussions, so it works for me.)

To more widely disseminate information discussed in such an Ada/Internet
forum, archive it and periodically post a pointer to the archive on
comp.lang.ada, Team Ada, etc.

My crotchety 2c,

Marc A. Criley
Senior Staff Engineer
Quadrus Corporation
www.quadruscorp.com