In my vision, the ideal forum would act like a listserv ;) That may sound tongue and cheek, but I'm quite serious. I used a forum by Discusware, which tried to do both, but alas, very recently, it quit working on the servers I use due to new folder permissions rules. It allowed reply by e-mail, but you still had to be subscribed to every forum. It also took into account math and science symbols. Still the forum was very proprietary, and you had to keep "subscribing" for upgrades and tech support. I've moved on over to phpBB which is free and can be very robust with free modifications, but I'm not aware of an ability to reply by e-mail (I'll have to check into that for myself). The great advantage to a forum would be an ability to isolate your interest. Instead of having to weed through subject headings from all over the board, you could pare it down to the "I'm most interested in" topics. Another great advantage would be searching features. The listserv setup seems a bit disjointed in that respect. Finally, instead of having to send people to the wiki for image identification or other quick response type requests using images, it can be attached with the message. So far, I've not seen a great combination of the advantages of both forms of communication. In my mind, an ideal would be a forum setup for which its members could choose to participate solely by e-mail. In the end, though, you would be having to maintain your forum as much as you have to maintain the WIKI, and that could be overwhelming. A lot less admin hassles with listserv I would suppose. Hi, Udai. Hope you, Satyam, and families are well. Mr. Kelly M. Irvin 10850 Hodge Ln Gravette, AR 72736 USA 479-787-9958 USDA Cold Hardiness Zone 6a/b mailto:kelly@irvincentral.com http://www.irvincentral.com/ Robt R Pries wrote: > I tend to agree with Boyce and Jim.