I am going to risk being exiled from the CPA email list by sending one more email; and explain the real purpose of the "discussion" between Mark and myself, as it related to the Colorado Pilots Association. As strange or technical as the discussion may have seemed to some people, the true intent was to come up with a better means of communication for ALL of the members of CPA and at the same time, eliminating the things that the others are complaining about. Actually the list email on this topic over the past day is the perfect example and argument FOR a forum, as opposed to an email list.

At present there are two main internet mechanisms used by groups to convey information to members of the group: email based (the List) and web based (the Forum).

Email or the LIST - All members get every single item, not necessarily in any given order, and some times enough time has elapsed that they forget the reason for the original communication. This is mixed in with all the other email they may receive, including spam, and personal email, and they must wade through all of the rolex replica watch offers, mortgage offers, viagra offers to get to the CPA items. Then they come upon a CPA list item that they may not be interested in theirselves and may be directly aviation related; but instead is promoting a better CPA organization. They respond by telling the others to take it off line, not realizing that this may be impossible as the sender has no way of knowing who else within CPA is interested and no way of getting their email addresses WITHOUT using the list. Catch 22 and a bad situation.

Web based or the FORUM - In this case the CPA members do not get any email they do not want. Instead, they simply browse to the CPA web site, at leisure and on their own schedule, and click to enter the forum. The first thing they notice is that there are no spammers hawking watches, mortgages, or viagra. The security of the forum prevents this. Instead they see a neatly arranged group of topics pertaining to CPA members, some of which they may be interested in, and others they may not be interested in. They simply go to what interest them and ignor what does not. Better than that, they can search on keywords & view the results, and all the messages related to a given topic are organized in a "threaded" manner, regardless of the date they were "sent". And even better than that, there is a link that says "Show me everything in the last 24 hours", and these items appear in a list, allowing the member to pick which he is interested in reading. Now I'll explain the reasons for the discussion between Mark & I. Some members may be so stuck on the LIST mechanism, that they are not willing to change. Mark's email was saying he has found a forum that also allowed the email (list) approach to function for those members. Then I asked does it allow in-line images? Everyone know an image is worth a thousand words. Turns out it does support images (& files). Example: Pilot A could post a trip report on airport ABC in Idaho with photos and significant comments. Six months later, Pilot B could search on airport ABC and would be able to get the trip report. Try that with an email list.