P212121

The CCP4bb is the most popular electronic mailing list that is related to macromolecular crystallography. The idea would go even further and bring together all bulletin boards (such as Phenix, Coot, PyMol) into one location. This would benefit developers and users in that they would only need to check one location to ask and answer questions.

It is time to move on when:
1) Members have a drawn out (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here) discussion on attachment size and html formatting in emails which is fine.
Does everyone need to receive each of these emails? No.
Both problems would be fixed by using a forum instead of an email based system.

2) Members are being used as targets for scams (yeah, I don’t know who falls for these either).

3) Have your work email address spammed due to being on the bulletin board.

4) You would not have to depend on others to summarize answers to the question they asked. This would not only save time of those asking questions, but allow others to have access to all the answers.

5) A forum could be organized by topic instead of the entire list receiving every email.
Members of the email bulletin board have already expressed their dissatisfaction in receiving every email.
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What would the topics look like for this new forum?

Protein Cloning, Expression and Purification
Protein Crystallization
Data Collection
Data Processing
Data Refinement
Program Installation Problems
Program Execution Problems
Employment
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The topics will need to be adjusted. It won’t be perfect at first, but will be much, much better.

It is time to make an old system fit the next generation.

Please drop me a line in the comments on what you think about this and if you would join.