For the ones that can't hold it back, here you can put your pro's and con's
and flame as much as you like. And Klaus can happily ignore (or read only)
if he wants:)
PLEASE PROVIDE FACTS BEFORE FLAMES.
Here is my list. I have triedto be neutral here!
NNTP pros:
-
Quick access. Personally I always have my email reader open, and the NNTP
is within the same app.
Quick overview. You can see instantly how many posting and a list of
topics
Cheap serving. There are lot of free noad servers out there.
Fast navigation.
Compact view
More spam resistant (that does not go for NNTP in general, but cadsoft's
forum has very little of it, if any at all)
Lowcost bandwidth
Low complexity
Several free apps to use it
It takes a lot less time to get through all messages than on HTTP.
No need to register
NNTP cons:
-
Port access. Some paranoid network administrators block NNTP port access.
Not very noob friendly. If you havent used a NNTP reader before, you need
to learn and get used to it.
Messages may look "boring" in plain text.
Text wrapping and quoting easily get messed up; in general not very
formatting friendly
Search unfriendly. All search has to happen on local copy of the message
list.
First time access load of all old messages takes a long time (maybe
Cadsoft has a low bandwidth to their servers?)
Sometimes need an extra app
HTTP pros:
-
Colors, emoticons, larger attachments (well, that is possible with NNTP
too, but not likely). In theory NNTP can do HTML content, but that is not
likely to happen.
installed.
HTTP cons:
-
I normally don't have a browser open at all times, and it takes a few
seconds to load the browser, even if I make a shortcut link to the site.
Navigation complexity. I have only see one forum which has a nice way of
navigating, but it only does plain text too.
Navigation speed. Moving from one message to the next is slower than NNTP.
Currently two custom 'accents' (element14 or eaglecentral) that needs to
be learned. There exist some common web forum formats, but afaik none of
them are used.
Higher cost and complexity of serving
Spam protection is harder
User account normally needed
Ok, thats all I can think of right now. Maybe you have something to add?
