The AEGEE forum will replace the discussions on the mailing lists: this was one of the most controversial CD announcements last year. The experiment failed. No one is using the AEGEE forum anymore.
The aim was honorable. Improving the communication in AEGEE without flooding the mailboxes of its members. In the past, whenever there was hot topic on AEGEE-L or Agora-L, sooner or later a few people got annoyed because of the flood of mails. However: everybody got easy access to information, because it was pushed into their inboxes. The CD of 2010/11 thought otherwise. They preferred a forum, because the discussion threads were transparent and everyone could contribute without spamming anyone.
There were warnings that AEGEE has a mailing list culture and not a forum culture. There had already been one big attempt to start a forum in the past, which had failed. The CD thought that the situation could be changed by making regular sum-ups of the hottest discussions in the forum – and by abolishing AEGEE-L and Agora-L as discussion channel. In the beginning it worked, with moderate success. Before the spring Agora in Enschede some issues and proposals were discussed in the forum.
Since then it has been in constant decline. In July there were six posts, in August three, in September so far zero. And most of those few entries were not written by the current AEGEE generation, but by AEGEE oldie Philipp von Klitzing. The AEGEE Forum is dead. This is weird, since AEGEE is more popular than ever: the Agora Budapest received 1720 applications, more than any AEGEE event ever.
So, what’s next? Will the mailing lists be revived? What’s your opinion?
Have a look yourself: http://www.zeus.aegee.org/forum/
