[cycleguy55]

Originally Posted by twobjshelbys

The other advantage forums give you is the ability to see stuff that on facebook would scroll out of your view window. If you're logged in then almost all Forum software keeps track of what you've read, and allows you to use the "New Posts" button to see what has happened since you last "mark(ed) forums read" (or read all the posts to an empty new posts list). That way you see what you missed, read what you're interested in and can clear the rest. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And don't forget SEARCH! It is your friend. In a forum as limited in scope and that has lived as long as this one, you can almost bet that any question you can think of has already been asked at least once, and many times, many times, since people don't use search. Especially tech questions.

Another tip is to look at the specific area of your inquiry. For example, questions about registrations? Look in the registrations subforum and scroll through the pages of topics, good chance your question is already there...

Forums are an evolution of something we had at DEC back in the 70s called "VAXNotes". It was internal (never sold to customers) and pre-dates "the internet" (when we were still on the Arpanet backbone, in fact we had intra-company email before we got a real internet gateway and could send email to outside contacts.) Len Kawell who wrote VAXnotes went on to create what became Lotus Notes, which grew into an enterprise email and general database front end, and also had threaded discussions. VAXNotes was easier to use for the "forum" stuff than Lotus. I used Lotus for many years at a well known hard drive company. Forum software was modeled after VAXnotes and Lotus Notes discussions and a handful of companies created similar products, this being one. New ones are still being done, all dressed up with modern looking fronts, but all providing the same basic function. End of internet history lesson for 2/20/22.

I used a lot of PROFS at IBM in the early 1990s, then Lotus Notes after that. Notes had a LOT of forum capability. I've been away from that environment for 10 1/2 years now and I still think Notes was / is a far better product than MS Exchange and Outlook - especially when I have to uninstall and re-install Outlook because of file corruption that I never experienced with Notes. Alas, like Beta vs VHS, the better marketers (Microsoft) beat the better product in the market. IBM, of course, sold the Notes / Domino business to HCL 3 years ago, but development continues and products are still available.