Floral Arrangement

Discussion group technologies used by FLORA

Email based

The idea here is simple: A user sends an Email message to a special Email address. Some software is then used to take this message and send copies out to the Email address of a number of people who have asked to receive copies of the message. These discussion groups are most often called mailing lists. Before someone receives a message, one must subscribe to the list - after which they will receive any messages posted from that point until they un-subscribe.

Mailing lists can be archived to allow new participants to catch up on some of the older threads, or to participate in the group without receiving copies of message in Email.

Newsgroup based

Newsgroups are a technology which is designed around multiple participant discussion groups. Rather than having copies of messages sent to individual people, a message 'posted' to a newsgroup on a news server. This news server then allows others to read that message, as well as sending copies to other news servers.

Since a copy of a message is not directly sent to each user, this technology if often preferred to mailing lists. It allows the users to read only the messages they wish, skipping the ones that are not of interest. It also allows them to read 'public' discussion with many people separate from the more individual messages in their electronic mailboxes.

While mailing lists are based on a subscription, someone can go to a newsgroup at any time and see what people have previously said. In this way it is much more like a bulleten-board : Postings are put onto the 'wall' to be read later by anyone that passes by. Readership and participation in newsgroups tends to be much larger than mailing lists for this reason.