Hey, gang,
I've been lurking, too, for a long time. (Thanks, Slurryguy, for inviting me!) Finally I have something to say.
First, on the debate of forum vs. yahoo.group; I wasn't going to open this can of worms, but since someone did it for me, I'll grab my spoon and start dishing it out. <mischievous grin>
I belong to the Linux Newbies forum, http://www.newbieslinux.com/forum/ , and it works quite well. You can subscribe to any topics you like, and choose to accept email notifications of any new posts in those topics, or any new posts to you in any topic/thread. You can subscribe to as many topics as you like. It has a complete index, making it relatively easy to find either an answer or the appropriate place to ask a question.
This yahoo.group thing drives me crazy! I don't want individual emails coming in all day, so
I find myself going days without looking at a new daily digest because I dread the endless scrolling through endless repetitions of seemingly endless threads. I miss half of what's being said because I get burned out before I get to the end of the digest. I have tons (megabytes) of papercrete posts in my email because I don't know which ones to delete, and which ones might have something worth saving. Even if I mark them "important reference" or "general reference", or whatever, it takes forever to scroll through to find the one tidbit of information I saved it for - and there is no way to tell which email it might be in. I almost never go to the group site.
On the other hand, in the Newbies Linux forum, I only get an email if it's on a topic I'm interested in or an announcement to all members, and all I have to do is click on the email link and Firefox takes me right there. If I need to scroll back to see what else has been said, I only have to look at a post once, except when someone quotes someone else (usually briefly) to make it clear what they're replying to. You can also search for all posts by a certain person, or all posts on a topic, or posts you haven't read yet, or a variety of other options. Each post has a number and the number of the post it is in response to, so you can click that number to quickly get to the originating post.
As for speed, if the HTML code is written properly, the forum is fast to load and to navigate, and is accessible to visually impaired people. John C. Fish (ProfFish in the forum) is the author/moderator of this forum, and can be easily contacted there. He is currently teaching accessible web design at a college in New Mexico.
With a forum, you could have a topic just for the building code project, and anyone interested could either subscribe to it or just drop in occasionally to see what's going on. There could be topics for regional specific data, recipes, equipment, etc. - even a chat room/coffee house/dogpen or whatever you want to call it for general chatting and bantering. It beats the hell out of an email box overflowing with the same messages quoted over and over and over and over and over and o..............
Now, on the subject of building codes, I have a question. Pardon my ignorance if the answer is common knowledge - I live a semi-sheltered life (the roof leaks). <groan>
Is there a written-in-stone all climates, all structures, all purposes recipe for cinder blocks, stucco, bricks and especially stone? How about the type and dimensions of wood used? I have always thought the particular "recipe" depended on where the items were produced and what was available nearby. It seems like a better standard code would be one based on a structural integrity test, in which a sample of the building material is tested for strength, water resistance, etc., not on the particular paper (or whatever) it's made of. Knowing the structural properties of a material should be sufficient to enable an expert to examine the blueprints for design flaws, shouldn't it?
Thanks for 'listening'.
Dusty
P.S.: Wait until you have to scroll through THIS message a hundred times! Personally, I think I'll auto-delete every message that comes in for the next week, just in case. <grin>
-- ÐÏࡱá
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