I had to wade into this as it's been a part of my professional life
for many years.  I have seen many companies fall over and have
personally buried quite a few that did not change.

The format if it doesn't change will die, the current format is what
a number of people are used to, which is fine.  There is a new
generation which doesn't tap into the information and goes begging as
the format is not current.

The issues with this type of format emailing to users, the bandwidth
used belongs to the sender.  There is a point at which a service
provider will not let you send "X" amount of mail before it is
considered spam.

A user logs in to a forum -- it's their bandwidth and not the forum
providers, though everything you read and browse is a download anyway,
so data has to travel to and from to access and read material.

Forums come in many flavours, depending on how the owner wants to set
them up.  They can also auto-send mail and digest type material, you
can subscribe to particular types of threads if you wish, you do not
have to subscribe to all of them -- subscribe only to topics of
interest.

Forums allow for galleries pictures of items, of parts and completed
works also build and repair threads.

Forums allow for FAQ sections (frequently asked questions).  There is
a greater world-wide appeal.

Forums can also link directly and send information automatically to
Facebook, Twitter, etc.; all the modern social media formats that are
available.  You may not like this but this is how the world turns
today.  Remarks and comments from social media can be fed back into
a forum.

Forums can use moderators, people who have an actual interest in a
particular field and help the owner of the forum control the type of
information that is displayed or the type of topics covered, if you
have an interest you can be very involved.

Forums also allow for linking to Ecommerce, an electronic Store Front
-- yes, with photos so that forum members can sell/trade/swap whatever
it is that they sell, this can be a free service or a paid service,
depends on the owner of the forum.

A forum with an Ecommerce backend and links to social media is a
_salable_ and valuable commodity for the owner -- someone may want to
buy it from them.

The argument that only this format is searchable as an archive is false
and simply not true.  The reason why Googling does not produce results
from this digest is simply because it is not set up to do so.  There
are rules which Google and other search engines obey and you need to
allow these robots to search and archive the text and information in
them.

Here are some interesting facts that this type of format cuts itself
from:

  Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on
average ( http://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/ ),
which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion
searches per year worldwide.

  Gone are the days of DoS, and yes, there are some modems still in use
in the world and it makes it more difficult for some to access data but
_not impossible,_ forums can be set up to be user friendly on a variety
of fronts, forums are also now friendly with mobile phones, tablets and
desktops.

  The Internet has become a mobile live animal.

The wonderful thing about specialization is that it is dangerous;
extinction is caused by over specialization dependence on only one type
of format, food, resource, etc.  In a disposable society where almost
everything has and hasn't got any value, it would be a shame that
information like this got buried by tons of BIG DATA and lost to the
next generation.

We all like to feel unique and indispensable -- well, that is not how
it works today; it never really has worked that way, our greatest
strides have been made whenever we joined the race.

The best thing about the technology I am describing is, it is _free_ 
to the owner, it costs nothing to build.  The only cost is the cost
of a server, e.g., http://www.bluehost.com/ is about $100 a year to
maintain a server, which gives you unlimited email addresses, unlimited
bandwidth, and unlimited storage capacity within reason.  If I wanted
to set up a forum it takes literally 20 seconds to hit a button which
executes a script and installation is done.  Setting it up takes a
little longer but it's no longer the domain of rocket scientists.

It also gives the owner of the forum an opportunity to make money,
some compensation for all the hard work at maintaining and distributing
this information, and we all need that at every point in our lives.
Everything has a cost.  Not to mention it opens the doors for sponsors
and companies who also might be interested in paying to have some
advertising space on a popular forum.

I read a number of sites that have fallen by the wayside in a forum
format.  Well, if the owner doesn't work on it, no matter the format
it will die a miserable and horrible death.

There are many people that use current technology to sell music boxes
on eBay and that also leverage YouTube with the sale as well.  One such
person I have fallen across a number of times sells on eBay, and if for
no other reason I tune into his video which he always has at the bottom
of his add, to listen to his voice which is very pleasant he presents
his product exceptionally well, and then I watch the video.  He is
leveraging today's technology and I will assume very successfully, he
is also putting in the work and effort to do so.

  http://www.singingbirdbox.com/technical-videos.html 

In the end run I look at it this way: it is a little selfish not to
want to move on, its tantamount to living on a farm and telling your
children, "Hey, you will use that plough over there and go torture
the horse, and under no circumstance will you use that tractor!"

For those that have websites with nice pictures and flowing text, I am
sure you would want a forum of the same type or similar quality to your
own websites or would you prefer no competition?

No offence is meant to anyone for my thoughts.

Steve Jelovac
grumpy2203@gmail.com.geentroep

 [ Goodness!  I wonder why we have survived for over twenty years...
 [ In 1995, MMDigest subscribers overseas were using Teletype machines;
 [ that's why we edit to 72-column format.  -- Robbie

 [ I would point out that you CAN, in fact, do Google searches in the
 [ Archives quite successfully.  We go to a lot of trouble to break
 [ the daily Digest into individual article pages on the our website
 [ so they can be indexed and searched by the search engines.  There's
 [ even a "custom" Google search window at the bottom of each page
 [ when accessing the MMD website.

 [ Improving the Archives by adding threads based on titles may not be
 [ that hard to add.  This wouldn't mean we'd stop publishing a Digest, but
 [ only that related articles would be easier to find when reading on
 [ the website.  I'll certainly look into it.

 [ As to issues w/r/t how much e-mail you can send before your service
 [ provider complains, the MMD __IS__ it's own service provider with
 [ a complete leased, "bare-metal" server.  It's more expensive than the
 [ likes of "Bluehost", but it gives us great performance for both e-mail
 [ and the website.  We picked a datacenter with a central location in
 [ St. Louis for best response time to everywhere in the US and the
 [ datacenter as a direct link to it's sister datacenter in Germany,
 [ giving very good performance in Europe.

 [ I am taking all of the suggestions in.  There's some good ideas for
 [ improvements that have been suggested in this and other posts that
 [ don't require running off our existing user base or increasing the
 [ noise level which would discourage those that like to print out
 [ the Digest and read it with their morning coffee  (yes, some folks
 [ do that!)

 [ We have tried some other suggestions that people made in the past
 [ that didn't pan out.   When Wikis started becoming popular, it
 [ was suggested that the MMD should have one.   Does anyone remember
 [ it ?   The only articles added to the MMD Wiki were advertisements for
 [ off-topic products, the names of which I won't mention lest this
 [ e-mail itself gets marked as SPAM!

 [ I am enjoying reading everyone's comments.   --Jody