Steven Finell Requests Access

[Finell]

I request access. I received a 5/25/2005 email from TapcisForum <tapcisforum@tapcis.com>, addressed to Tapcis Forum Members@aol.com, that announced the Tapcis Web site, and I finally decided to take a look. I got a rush of nostalgia.

I was very active on several Compuserve forums (fora?) from roughly the late 1980s to mid 1990s, including WPSG, LawSIG, and several other product support forums. I used Tapcis for my forum participation and was a member of the Tapcis forum.

In my opinion, the original pre-AOL Compuserve forum structure, with organized sections and file upload/download areas parallel to the message boards, has not been equalled as a structure for online community. Threading made messages and replies easy to follow without extensive quoting. Also, the ability to use the forums either in "real time" or with offline software like Tapcis helped to keep discussions timely. (By contrast, with listsrvs and Usenet, if you see a question, you never know whether someone else has already answered it, because of the time lag. Sometimes, no one answers because everyone assumes someone else has. Sometimes, you see 20 answers to the same simple question.) I believe that the quality of the forum structure and tools contributed to the quality of the participation and the participants.

By the way, the software that you chose for this site is as good as Web-based message board software gets.

I do regret, though, that you have fallen victim to the Micorsoft monopoly: You allow .doc (ie, MS Word) files as attachments, but NOT .wpd (WordPerfect) files!